Defender of the Future
by GTK
Summary: Book 1 of the Tidesinger Trilogy. I came back to upload this after many years. Someone informed me that it was being stolen. Do not contact me for permission to use this, as it never has been, nor ever will be, given.
1. Chapter 1

Defender of the Future Book One of the Tidesinger Trilogy

Ecco The Dolphin is © Sega 1993-2000. Used without permission. Ecco's personality created by GTK, 2001.© All fan-created characters created by GTK, 2001.© 

From the abyss at last rose Tidesinger's seed: Out of dark, out of deep, into desperate need Came the finned one, the air-breather Star-brow, swift-scythe swimmer Raced the moon in the tide-pools, chased The Salmon-God's silver light. A race 'gainst time he swam, 'gainst the deadly Foe. Heir of the Lone-swimmer was he, the star-glow On his forehead. He was the stone That split the stream of time. Yet not alone Swam the star-browed. Teeth-in-the-water swam With him; rose dark from Atlantis' sand Young spawn of Greshruk, scion of death Whose jaws of legend rent Tidesinger's flesh.

This is the song, this is the story Of Ocean's hope and Tidesinger's glory.

-from the Tale of Tidesinger

Chapter One

It was at the change of the tides, when the waters were at their highest, that destiny swam into Ecco's life. On reflection, he supposed, he should not have been surprised at that fact; every calf knew that the tides brought in change, and that the waning tide was the worst for bad things.

But, as the situation stood at the time, it came as a complete shock to the young dolphin when things started to happen. He was playing with Star, up and down the sandbanks in a noisy game that was at times chasing and at other times something else. Still an adolescent and only recently having left his mother's side, Ecco was one of the lowest-ranking members of the pod, and was generally thought of as rather silly. He didn't care; he liked to have fun.

He had it a lot with Star. He had been friends with the female dolphin ever since they had both been calves; their mothers were related in some erratic way. Star was a few weeks younger than he, but had a sense of mischief that would have rivaled anybody's. When they had been children, the terrible twosome had driven most of the adults to distraction at one time or another, often being punished for their over-boisterous spirits. The nearness of adulthood had done little to mellow them.

It was a warm day; the sunlight sparkled in the water. The two young dolphins chased each other through the shafts of sunlight, squeaking and whistling joyfully to each other and occasionally rising to the surface together to breathe. They feared little enough in the bay; the adults kept sharks out and there were few other things in the sea that would give a swift dolphin pause. Yet, today, something distracted the twosome from their leisure: a sound.

Momentarily breaking off the game, Star rolled on her side and exposed a long and creamy underbelly; the tip of one flipper trailed the water surface. "Do you hear that?" she asked, a long trill of clicks and pops.

Ecco paused in the water, listening. "Hear what?" he asked.

A moment later, he heard it too--the wailing song of something in desperate need. There was a pause, possibly for breath, and then another sad wail. He backfinned nervously, rolling his eye towards the deep blue at their right. Whoever it was, it was coming closer.

"It's not one of us," Star remarked, puzzled. "Where's his pod?"

The song was without words, but it was of pain--listening to it, Ecco could feel what the singer was feeling. The miserable agony of the wound, the fluking through the water with bloodtrail stretching out behind you--the sharks always at your tail, swimming up the path you left in your wake. It was an unnerving sound. He shivered involuntarily, imagining the teeth ripping at his flesh.

Other songs rippled out into the water; songs of confusion and sudden fear as the other dolphins responded to the stranger's cry. Shadows passed by in the water several feet away. There was Corse, the pod leader, and Dairine...

"Let's go!" Star exclaimed, sweeping by. Caught up in the sudden urgency, Ecco hurried to catch up with her, darting through the warm water. Other delphine shapes flashed past, all heading in the same direction.

He wrestled his way through a narrow pass and came out in the coral reef with Star at his shoulder. The owner of the voice was visible now, and just as Ecco had suspected, he was trailing blood. He was a different species to them; a common dolphin, colored gaudily with white, yellow and a deep Atlantic greeny-black. He came slowly, beating weakly with his tail and rolling continually onto one side before correcting. A ragged wound in the other dolphin's back told them what had happened. "Sharkbite," whistled Dairine from behind him, in a shocked tone. "Looks bad..." A slender coil of red trailed out behind the stranger, fading into fog with distance.

Corse and Ai wasted no time; without hesitating, or even looking for sharks, they fluked towards the stranger and supported him in the water. With the two bottlenoses helping out, the injured stranger ascended and took a long, shaky breath. The others fanned out to watch for predators as Corse and Ai helped their wounded acquaintance towards the shallower water where he could rest. Sonar shivered through the water like sunlight.

The stranger's head and fins drooped in utter exhaustion. Ecco shook himself into movement and kept pace with the slow procession, clicking worriedly; Star swam up beside him and lightly brushed his side for a moment before taking off elsewhere. He paid her no heed. Something was speaking to him--perhaps it was Sea itself. He had a strange feeling in his gut that this unknown would bring more than an exhausted lone one to their shores. Excitement, adventure...

"...Thanks..." the stranger gasped out weakly, "...owe you..."

"Never mind all that," Corse answered sternly, aiding the other up for another breath. "Just rest for now--talk later. We'll take care of you, don't worry."

"...no... I have to tell you now..." The stranger let out a stream of bubbles, struggling to continue. "Danger in... the waters..."

"Danger?" Ecco whistled out loud, unable to curb his curiosity. One or two of the adults eyed him balefully, warning him not to start chattering.

He wasn't needed, anyway; the stranger seemed more interested in talking than in resting. "Came for us... no warning... only survivor. You have to flee... please, you have to..."

The dolphins murmured uneasily amongst themselves, more than one backfinning a little out of nervousness. Corse took charge, wheeling around and chasing off one or two of the over-curious youngsters. Ecco backed off but remained in sight, desperate to know what the stranger was talking about.

"It attacked us at dawn," the stranger gasped out wearily. The utter exhaustion in his tone spoke volumes about how desperate he was to be heard--it was a struggle for him just to speak. Ai pressed against him, trying to comfort him by her touch. He rolled away from her in sudden fear and had to be steadied by Corse. "Came out of nowhere... I don't think the others escaped. Please... they'll come here sooner or later. You have to get help... can't fight this ourselves."

Ecco's eyes widened. Some creature? "Was it a shark?" he asked curiously, finning a little closer in his eagerness to hear the tale. "A feeding frenzy?"

The stranger let out a moan, and Corse rounded on Ecco, driving him off. "A shark," the pod leader whistled fiercely, once he had gotten Ecco far away enough. "Big shark took a bite out of his back. That's all you have to know. Now get out of here!"

"But I--"

"Go on!" Corse eyed him dangerously; Ecco turned tail and fled.

But he slowed down quickly, and was just able to hear the comment from Ai as Corse turned back.

"This is no shark bite..."

It was evening before Corse called the scattered pod together, and Ecco spent most of the intervening period nosing around the sandbanks, feeling grumpy and left out. Star tried to draw him out of his depression, but he chased her away.

Something within him knew this was a chance to do something. A chance of adventure. And Corse was depriving him of it! It wasn't fair!

Time seemed to pass far too slowly for the impatient young dolphin. When the call finally came out to assemble, he practically flew through the water. Corse had called them by the Meeting Stone, a tall pillar that stood by itself in the center of the bay; by the time Ecco arrived, there were only two others there. A little nervous in front of matriarch Ai and the battle-scarred warrior Klik, he drew his fins in and waited. Corse was in front of them, the stranger at his side. The wound on the other dolphin's back had finally stopped bleeding, Ecco saw, but it still looked very painful, and indeed when the stranger lifted his head and glanced at him, he saw the pain-mist still in the sad eyes.

He waited impatiently, surfacing to breathe often, while the others arrived in dribs and drabs. There were fifteen dolphins in the pod, including four very young calves; it was a reasonably sized group. Ecco eyed the stranger, wondering what had happened to his own group that he had limped in on his own.

Corse swam forward a length and sharply whistled the others to silence. Without wasting any time on formalities, the other dolphin went into business. "The stranger has something he would like to tell us." One or two of the younger bottlenoses whistled to each other knowingly, but Corse glared them to silence.

Slowly and stiffly, the stranger swam forward to face the unruly pod. "Thank you," he said quietly. His voice was calm now, and though still weak it lacked the wheezing tones of exhaustion it had had earlier. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Orcus, leader of the Sun River Pod--although I fear they are no more. I am the only survivor."

Shocked whistles went up. Orcus gravely inclined his head.

"It is true. My pod entered coastal waters late last night after a journey across the Medusa Straits. I remember that my spouse was uneasy; she felt something had been stirred up by the great storm three nights ago." Ecco remembered the storm--it had been quite something. Orcus was looking over the silent dolphins; he was tiring now, it was no little effort for him to tell his story. He let out air and doggedly went on, his words washing over his spellbound audience like a current. "The creatures attacked at dawn. I never got a close look at them; they came up from below."

The common dolphin groaned softly to himself, reliving the experience, and when he next spoke, his voice was softer, almost dreamlike. He was back there. "The creatures cling like kraken, and they leave scars--but they have jaws like sharks too. I try to defend the pod, but the creatures are too many. I break many of them with swift charges. They slip between us and take the weak first, but then they attack the strong too, until the water is red with blood. They have a hunger greater than anything I ever saw before. I lose track of how many of my people still live... finally I know there are none left. I give a great cry--I rush at one of them. They have taken my spouse, Nautila, my love and light. I want to rejoin her in the afterlife--there is nothing left for me here. Jaws rake across my back and I feel the lifeblood rush from me. The pain makes me flee. I leave my pod and race across the straits. I am ashamed: I am a coward. Yet I dare not face the foe. I am too old, too infirm..."

"This is dreadful," Star moaned, shaking. "Please, somebody make him stop..." Ecco nudged her gently in the side, trying to comfort the stricken female.

Orcus gave a start, and then shook himself, coming back to the here and now. The common dolphin raised his gaze and swept the assembled pod before him. "I come before you now in disgrace," he said with a kind of desperate dignity. "I failed my pod when they had most need of me. I should have gone quietly into the night, but I loved my own vanishing life too much." A sigh escaped him in a silvery trail of bubbles. "The sharks came after me, of course--they sensed my distress, merciful beasts. I would have gone to them, but I remembered Nautila, and I could not give up. So I sought out other dolphins, barely knowing what I did. And I have brought you the tidings of my fall from grace, in order that you may be prepared for a struggle of your own."

There was a long silence.

"Orcus-fa," Corse said at last, giving the other dolphin the honorific suffix of a respected pod leader, "if only half of what you say is true, you were not to blame. No dolphin could have resisted a foe like that of which you speak. But are you sure that they were not sharks? A--a pack in the throes of the Tearing Hunger, perhaps?" The dolphins shifted and murmured at the mention of the Tearing Hunger, the shark frenzy.

Orcus shook his head. "Sharks I have seen, and many. In my younger days I fought off the great tiger sharks that menaced my people. I faced down a white pointer in the deep south. These things were not sharks." He gazed at the Sapphire Bay leader with a solemn, dark eye. "I tell you this in all honesty: sharks do not have such a great hunger as these things did. I swam where they had been, and the water was dead. Dead. Even the coral was stripped bare."

A great whistling and cacophony of voices rose up, most pregnant with dread. The idea of dead waters was a haunting one. All dolphins were used to the idea of death--mainly the death that came in a cloud of blood and silver scales and roiling finned jaws, but quite often the death that crept up unawares and took an old warhorse in his sleep. No, death was nothing new to them.

But things were always left behind in death--the mortal shells. Even sharks left something, whether it were a shred, a cloud of blood, a jawbone. And even sharks could be sated.

"Silence!" That was Corse's voice, piercing the din like a swordfish's charge. The pod leader cruised back and forth between Orcus and the others, until he had intimidated everybody into silence once again. "Now listen," he commanded, his voice coming sharp and clear, "we cannot afford to ignore this. I will take comments and suggestions. I appeal to you--what should we do?"

"Do as he says!" called Ai. "Flee while we can!"

"No!" broke in Klik. "We should investigate! Why flee from something you don't even know?"

"Stay put. Sun River is a long way from Sapphire Bay--they probably won't even come this way."

"That's insane! We have to get out of here!"

"Where would we go? This is our home--"

Ecco winced and drew in his fins. The debate escalated rapidly until it seemed that the whole of Sea was awash with shrill delphine voices. Everybody was shouting at each other, and it was becoming more and more clear to him that nobody knew what to do. His heart beat wildly. The fools! Wasn't it obvious?

"Send someone to ask the whales for help!"

The entire pod was silent. Ecco blinked. Who had said that?

Corse was staring at him. They were all staring at him.

He gulped. Oh, Sea... it wasn't me, was it?

Slowly, Corse cruised towards him, floating easily on the water. "That's your opinion, is it, young Ecco?" he asked. The buzzes and clicks in his voice set Ecco's teeth on edge.

"With all due respect, Corse-fa,", Ecco whistled respectfully--but unable to extinguish the tinge of irritation in his voice--"I think it's the only thing to do. Nobody here has seen these things before, and the only logical thing to do would be to ask the whales what to do."

Corse turned with a flick of his tail and began to circle again, around and around the exhausted Orcus. "You know, of course," he said, "it's out of the question. If there is such an enemy close at hand, I cannot afford to spare any of the pod's fighting members." He rolled in the water, and his eye swept over Ecco. The young dolphin felt a sudden irrational thrill. Was Corse suggesting..?

"Let me go," he whistled. Voices rose up again, in disbelief and scorn, but Corse whistled them all to silence.

"Let us hear what the youngling has to say," the pod leader ordered sternly. Ecco felt a sudden spurt of pride at that. Corse glanced at him, then at Orcus who was about all in; Ai was close by the common dolphin's shoulder, ready to support him if he needed it.

Everyone was looking at Ecco again, and he felt a hot flush; he was unaccustomed to having the whole pod listen to him, except when he was answering for one or other of his misdeeds. "Well, I..." he began, but his voice turned into a squeak. Embarrassed, he surfaced for air, took a calming breath, and then started again. "I think that, since we don't know what the creatures are or how to deal with them, we need to ask the advice of the whales. Nothing tackles a blue whale and lives. We wouldn't have to send a delegation--I could go on my own. The blues aren't far from here at this time of year, are they?" He was warming to the idea. "I could be there and back in a day or two."

"You would have to cross the straits," Orcus warned, "and run the gauntlet of the foe. Aren't you afraid of them, after what I told you?"

"I'm not scared," Ecco said bravely, and then quailed under Corse's eye. "Well, a little," he amended embarrassedly, "but it won't stop me, honest!" The dolphins were looking at each other dubiously, and he whistled in desperation. "Please, let me go! I promise I'll do my best--and--and I won't do anything to embarrass the pod!"

A short fizz of laughter went up at that last, legacy of Ecco's childhood escapades with Star. Corse glanced at Ai, and then back towards Ecco. "If my memory serves me right, the blues north of here are led by Sendarian," he said. "He is very old and wise; he might possibly have heard something of this foe."

Ecco's heart did a flip-flop. "So you're letting me go?" he asked hopefully.

Corse turned and coasted off, Ai and Klik close by. The three dolphin elders held a whispered conversation before coming back, sweeping past Orcus with dignified grace. "You'll have to go alone, young Ecco," Klik said sternly, "for we can't spare anybody else to go with you. You realize that it'll be dangerous."

"I know," Ecco said softly. "I want to do it. Please, let me try!"

The three elders had another quickly whispered conversation, then Corse turned to face Ecco once more. "Leave," he said. "We will consider your offer. Come to the mouth of the bay when the moon is high, and we will talk further."

Ecco turned, feeling the water of evening wash against his sides, and swam off slowly, very conscious of how heroic he must look. He felt Star's admiring eyes on his retreating tail, and his heart sang within him. This promised to be a great adventure. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Moonrise found Ecco waiting at the mouth of the bay, as promised; below him the soft sand of the bay dropped away into the deep blue of the open ocean. Currents came to the lone dolphin with the freedom of the night, tastes in the water that spoke of adventures far away. Dimly, as through a haze, he could taste something else, just at the perimeter of his senses. It was an odd coppery feeling, a bad feeling... death was in the water tonight.

He had spent the rest of the waning day alone, in no mood for Star's exuberance. The wild joy of being important had left him swiftly, until he was left once more purely himself--and thinking with something like terror of the task ahead. What have I let myself in for? He could feel it--there would be no going back. Anyway, what sort of fool would he look like now if he turned back, went up to Corse, sniveled to be let off the hook? S'yuuii! They would see him as a silly adolescent who had gotten off his head on a taste of novelty.

No, he couldn't go back, not if he were to keep some shred of self-respect. He had to go through with this. Nervously Ecco began to swim in circles, his mind working ahead of his body. The dolphins had many songs about the dangers of the open ocean, and most focused on how much wiser it was to stay with the pod. The air-breathers did not willingly go alone.

Air beckoned. Ecco rose, breathed, and sank again into a slough of despondency. The moon was nearly at its zenith above; silvery light turned the calm water into white fire. Rolling onto his side, the young dolphin eyed the heavenly body, noting that it was nearly half full. Its energies were gathering, as they always did in the age-old cycle. In not too many days' time, the moon would be full, a white sphere in the heavens. The great salmon saw the moon as God, he remembered; the full moon would draw the fish to their spawning grounds this summer.

Half to himself, he began to croon the little snatches of song he remembered from his childhood, songs that told how to escape from sharks and which fish not to eat. Thus occupied, he barely noticed Corse's approach until the older male let out a soft volley of sonar clicks, the delphine equivalent of a polite cough. Ecco righted himself in a wash of embarrassment, and sent out an answering squeak, then backfinned quickly as the pod leader approached.

"Having second thoughts?" Corse asked.

Feeling silly, Ecco shook his head. "No, of course not. I want to go." It wasn't a lie, he insisted to himself; he did want to go, if only to prove to himself that he wasn't a complete hypocrite. He looked up at Corse quickly, imagining that the older dolphin knew what he was thinking; but the expression in Corse's eyes seemed nothing to do with him. It was a dark look, a sharklike stare.

"I came alone to talk to you, because I have one or two things to say which I would rather the others did not hear." Corse glanced back towards the bay, where indistinct delphine shapes cruised slowly by in the clear night water. "Are you willing to hear them?"

Ecco blinked at his tone; it seemed strangely deferential, not at all the way the alpha male should speak to a low-ranking adolescent. "Of course," he answered, a little confused, and then suddenly cottoned on. "You don't think I can do it, do you?" he asked sharply, his voice gathering strength as his anger rose. "You think I'm not going to come back!"

"Ecco, Ecco," Corse said calmly, "I know you're a determined youngster, but there's a lot of sea out there. We all respect your bravery in making the offer, but you must understand--even Klik would balk at going alone. Your greatest hope will lie in your being unnoticed and swift to flee. My heart is heavy in me at our having to send you this way, but I can spare no other."

"I swear, I won't fail you," Ecco insisted a little stiffly.

"You're strong in heart and lung, at least," Corse said, ignoring his last sentiment. "You have a good chance. And... there is the matter of your sire and heritage."

"My heritage?"

Ecco barely remembered his parents; his mother had been taken by sharks when he had been but a youngling. His father, as far as he knew, had been a lone-swimmer, one of the mysterious ones who went with no pod but lived on their own wits, and on the mystic delphine lore that was their birthright. The lone ones... knew things. They knew songs that could stop sharks in their tracks, or charm fish out of holes. But they kept those things to themselves.

The lone-swimmer had met Ecco's mother on the night of the full moon, when delphine energies were at their height. Old Salla had often told him the tale. His father had been a gray dolphin, dusted with stars under the light of the moon; from him, apparently, came the five starlike markings on Ecco's own head. Others had often remarked on them; how unusual they were in a bottlenose. Supposedly, since his father had been a lone-swimmer, Ecco had to have inherited the ability to wield those delphine powers of song--but he had never felt anything like in his life.

"Those markings on your head, young Ecco..." Corse harrumphed, seeming not to know where to go on from there. "They mean something, in legend. Follow me now." He rose up towards the surface like a gray ghost. Ecco followed, greatly wondering at the pod leader's strange manner.

Corse touched the surface, blew, and then spy-hopped, fluking slowly to push his head out of the water. Moonlight sparkled on his slick skin. "Look, Ecco--up there."

"Where?"

"The stars. Don't you see them?" Five stars seemed to glow brighter than the rest, shimmering and twinkling in the velvety blackness of the heavens. It was silent in the cool night. Strangely, as if from afar, Ecco seemed to hear voices--delphine voices, singing to each other from those distant stars. He blinked, and the strange happening was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had been tinnitus. He shook his head and subsided into the water as one of the stars above flashed brightly.

Corse was waiting for him. "You heard something," the pod leader said flatly.

"I... I don't know what I heard." He backfinned a little, nervous. "Corse..." How were you supposed to go on from there?

"There is an old children's story," Corse said, beginning to swim in a slow, lazy arc, "that strange dolphins once came down from the sky to give us the lore we now hold dear. Because they had swum among the stars for so long, stars had stuck to their bodies and they glittered with them. The lone-swimmers are the descendants of these strange ones." He let out air slowly before continuing. "The starlike markings some dolphins carry are supposed to be a mark of their pure ancestry. Yours say that one day you too will swim among the stars."

"But it's only a children's story," Ecco said, mystified. "Everybody knows you can't swim among the stars. There's no air up there, no nothing. Just cold."

Corse whistled softly to himself, the delphine equivalent of a sigh. "These things that took the Sun River pod... they were supposed to be no more than a story, too."

"There's stories about those creatures?" Ecco was shocked.

"Some. Very little. The lone-swimmers know most. According to their oral tradition, it was one of them who drove the foe back a long time ago." Corse dipped his tail in sudden scorn. "Some mystic rot about singing down the moon, or other such calf-chatter."

Ecco suppressed a grin. That was the real Corse, the down-to-earth dolphin he knew. "But," he said after a moment more, "why are you telling me this? If you don't believe it yourself, I mean."

"I believe one thing," the pod leader answered gravely, turning to fix one liquid eye on the young dolphin. "Your father's blood is strong in you... whoever he is. You have never liked to swim with the pack, as the saying goes. If anybody of our pod can make it to the blues and back, it will be you, young Ecco. There may be something in the legend of the stars, there may not--who can tell? But I like to think that I know my own."

"So I am going, then." He didn't know whether to feel relieved or appalled. Suddenly he realised that he really didn't know how to find the blue whales. He had never left the bay without his pod before. Ecco's father might indeed have been a lone-swimmer, but for himself he had no idea how to go about it.

"You are," Corse agreed softly. "If you're willing--and I think you are, though you have inner qualms." Ecco jerked, wondering how the pod leader was able to read his mind. Paying him no need, Corse swept round in a circle and ended up stationary in the water on his right hand, facing out into the blue yonder. "The whales are north of here, Ecco, through the open ocean. I don't need to tell you to watch out for sharks. Follow the constellation that mirrors your star-markings, until you pass through a narrow place where the water becomes colder all of a sudden. Listen very hard from then on; you'll hear the blues before you see them. Follow the sound of their song." The pod leader surfaced and blew. "When you find one of them, ask to be brought before Sendarian the Songmaster--that is the title of pod leader among the blues. They will only help you if you give the correct title. When you come face-to-face with Sendarian, you're on your own. Just tell him everything you can, and for Sea's sake be sincere."

"I'll do that," Ecco promised.

"What do you have to do again? Tell me."

"Follow-the-star-markings-to-the-narrow-place-then-listen-for-the-song--" He blew. "-Ask-for-Sendarian-the-Songmaster. Be sincere."

"Well done," Corse said gravely. "Now don't forget any of that, because it's all important. Are you ready?"

Ecco nodded.

"It should take you only a couple of days at most, young Ecco. The pod won't go anywhere in the meantime, so hurry back with Sendarian's answer." Corse paused, looking at him with a sharp, intelligent expression. "Do you want to say farewell to anybody first?"

Ecco was silent, thinking. By rights he ought to say goodbye to Star, at least--since they were such close friends. But he didn't want her to get upset at the thought of his leaving, going into such danger. It would be best if he merely slipped away into the night. Feeling very mature, he shook his head. "No, Corse-fa, I think I'll just leave quietly. After all, I'll be back soon," he added, more for his own benefit than for anybody else's. If he believed it hard enough, it should happen.

The other dolphin fizzed amusement for a moment. "I like your confidence, Ecco. Very well. I will tell the pod in the morning. Now--it is time."

Ecco felt his heart begin to pound. The blue waters stretched out before him, dark and still, shot through with moonlight. It's really happening, he thought. Uncertainly, he swam a few lengths, then turned and looked back to where Corse waited silently. "Well..." he began. "Goodbye..."

"Goodbye, Ecco... and good luck."

He turned again, turning his back on the bay, and fluked out into the open waters. Cooler pelagic currents brushed his skin, carrying with them no hint of sand or seaweed. Ecco felt a shiver run through him at the touch of the ocean. This was real now; officially, he was a lone-swimmer, at least for these few days. He was on his own for the first time in his life.

The young dolphin turned back. "Corse?" he whistled nervously.

There was no response. A swift volley of sonar clicks vanished into the blue without echoing back to him; there was nobody there.

He started swimming again, with some effort. It got easier the further he went, and his jerky strokes began to smooth out into a steady, mile-eating tailbeat. He surfaced quickly to breathe and mark where the stars were. The five brightest ones floated before him, leading him into the north where the whales waited out in the cold blue, vast and inscrutable like the moon.

Morning came differently in the open ocean. Ecco was used to it creeping up, appearing over the cliffs with a sudden shower of light, long after the fog of dawn had dissipated. In the open ocean, morning was a much slower affair. There came a soft lightening of the water that gently relieved the darkness of moonset. Pink streaked the distant sky to his right, showing through the thin blanket of cloud as if it were a kelp bed blowing in the current. Then came the sparkling; it started out gently, creeping across the waves towards him, until the water was full of it. The stars had long vanished, and Ecco swam to some inner instinct he could never have explained, knowing only that he could not stop until he found the whales.

He felt lonely, but it was almost a pleasant feeling; there was excitement there too, and deep beneath that a fierce, wild joy that came from being on his own, pitting his wits against the jaws of the hunters. In actual fact, he knew he wasn't in that much danger. The big sharks--the tigers, the terrible white pointers--hung about the shore in general, preferring the warmer waters and the easy pickings on the continental shelf. Out here in the middle of nowhere, Ecco only had to worry about the pelagic blue sharks, fish-eaters all of them, the torpedo-shaped mako and the oceanic whitetip with its spotted fins. Large and healthy as he was, he would present too much of a threat to one of these smaller fish.

The waters were choppy, and there was a slight mist in the air. Ecco tasted debris in the water, legacy of the storm that had raged a few nights ago. The elders of the pod had been worried after that storm; such things tended to stir up things from the deep that were better left buried. After one such, a few years ago, the bay had been filled with deadly stinging medusae torn from their deep lairs. It was possible that the creatures that had attacked Orcus's pod had simply been disturbed by the storm and would return to their rightful home in a few days.

Ecco breached, flinging himself free of the water in sudden ecstasy. Oh, it was grand to be his own master for once! Nobody was around to tell him what to do. He laughed and jumped again, testing gravity with his shimmering blue-gray body. He wanted to shout, "Look at me! Look at the stars on my forehead! I am a creature of destiny!" The young dolphin capered through the shafts of morning sunlight, making enough noise to first attract and then frighten off an inquisitive blue shark.

When he finally tired of the sport, he realised he was hungry. Diving swiftly, Ecco click-clicked a quick search for a school of fish, and found mackerel only a few lengths down. The fish scattered when they heard him coming; he gave chase, managing to snap down only one or two of the very small and slow. Irritated, he drew back. Eating was much easier with others to help you, herding the fish to the surface where there was nowhere to flee. Lone-swimmers had their own little tricks to use, he remembered--songs to hypnotise the fish. He backfinned away, getting some distance, and then charged, managing this time to snap up a somewhat larger specimen. Ecco gulped it down hastily, thinking that he was probably expending more energy on hunting than he had been swimming. Another charge netted him one more fish, and then he gave up on the panicked mackerel in disgust and returned to the surface. Placing the sun on his right, he started to swim again.

Time stretched out before him, liquid as the water around him. By midmorning, Ecco had covered many more miles, and he could once again taste the sand and seaweed of coastal waters. The straits were just ahead, and the most dangerous part of his journey. In crossing over from pelagic to coastal zones, he would once again be exposing himself to the great sharks. The most important thing, he knew, was to make as little noise as possible, and act confident. He was leaving no bloodtrail and swimming fast; if he made no sounds that could be interpreted as distress, the sharks would probably leave him alone.

Probably.

He dived, found a shoal of small fry, and managed to glean enough to take the edge off his hunger once again. A big tuna watched him balefully; he was trespassing now. Ecco paid the fish no heed, though it was more than half his size; he swept past and up onto the continental shelf. A smooth expanse of sand opened out in front of him. The straits should be only a few miles ahead. The sun continued to gather strength overhead, sending shafts of golden light through the water. Mythology said that, at certain times, light could be swum through just as water could--surrounded by gold as he was this morning, Ecco could believe it.

Gradually, though, the dolphin's exuberant mood dimmed as he became aware of something wrong in the waters around him. Puzzled, he clicked out a few sonar pulses, but there was no sign of any shark in the vicinity. The disturbance was coming from ahead.

Suddenly, there was a great rushing in the water, the sound of something approaching fast. He backfinned frantically, but it was only a manta ray. The giant plankton-eater flashed past him in a wash of haste, flapping its way through the water. Ecco blinked, and stared in the direction whence it had gone. A moment later, he was being buffeted by fish. Little coastal fish, the sort that hid in the reefs--they rushed around the startled dolphin without any regard for the large enemy he was to them. He was too startled to snap at any, because suddenly the water around him was filled with movement. There went a school of tuna, a sea snake, a young marlin... even a blue shark, swimming as if all hell were after it. All rushed in the direction of the manta ray, racing for the deep waters. The shark went right by him without a second glance; an outstretched pectoral fin raked along his side.

"Wait!" Ecco cried as the slender predator sped past. "What is it? Why are you leaving?"

"Flee!" came the answer back. "Flee, quickly! Danger in the water! Danger! Flee!" The shark sped out into the open ocean, still screaming its message to all who would listen. "Flee! Flee! Danger!"

As quickly as it had started, the mass exodus was over. Ecco turned slowly in waters that were utterly empty of life. Below him on the sand, a scallop jump-jetted by, clapping the two halves of its shell together to bounce over the smooth expanse. It, too, was headed in the same direction. In a few moments, the shellfish had gone.

The waters were dead.

Ecco began to tremble. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

He had to go back. It was the only sane thing to do. Whatever was out there, it had scared off everything that would normally live on the coastal straits. Ecco turned and glanced back, into the deeper waters; he could faintly hear the last of the refugees, passing swiftly out of earshot. There was literally no sign of life around him--nothing at all. What in Sea could have caused so much sheer dread?

Ecco began to swim again, slowly, forward into the silent waters. His body was on autopilot, carrying him forward without any real direction from the brain. He had to pass through the straits in order to reach the blue whales--there was no alternative route. The only other thing he could do would be to turn back. Flee, like a calf jumping at shadows? Yeah, sure, that would really impress Star... Ecco surfaced for air, automatically, then slipped back down again. His shadow passed over unmoving ripples on the sand, over a bare, white expanse devoid of life. It was very quiet.

He had to go on. If nothing else, the young dolphin intended to at least catch a glimpse of Orcus's "creatures" for himself.

The sand rolled out beneath him like a road. The water became clear as crystal; now there weren't even the usual planktonic life forms floating near the surface. Ecco glanced down and saw the rocks scattered across the sand; normally they would be literally covered with weeds, plants, little shelled things, anemones... all kinds of plant and animal life. The dolphin's eyes widened, and he dived for a closer look. His suspicions were confirmed; the rocks were as bare as if they had only just been torn up from deep within the earth. Something had scraped even the stones clean of life.

Ecco went on, swimming very slowly and cautiously. The water shallowed further, becoming a reef that would once have blossomed with all kinds of life. He nudged an outcrop of coral, and it crumbled before his snout. Dead...

He halted suddenly. Had he heard something? With an effort the young dolphin stilled all movement, hanging motionless as a stone in the silent waters. His muscles were trembling now, urging him to flee while he still had time. He could understand the blue shark's terror; whatever had caused this, it was making him feel the same way. He wanted to flee himself, but doggedly he held himself still, determined to get his first look at the mysterious foe. It was an effort. Ecco listened harder, focusing his whole being into his ears... and at last he heard it. It was a strange, high screaming noise, hardly animal at all. There was something alien about it. The eerie sound jarred through the water like sharp edges, and he realised that there was teeth in it. It was a noise of death and destruction... a harbinger of doom. Ecco trembled violently, suppressing an overpowering urge to turn tail and swim, swim he knew not where. He was too terrified to let out a sonar click, and so he first saw the creatures with his eyes.

A ghostly shadow flickered in the blue, at the limits of his vision. Two shapes moved towards him with steady, calm precision, fading out of the blank azure of the sea. The shrilling noise grew louder, a sound that could not possibly have been made by any beast of this world. Limbs flickered like squid, bending in the current. Ecco began to backfin slowly as the creatures came closer. There was a lazy grace in their movements; the confident, unhurried motion of the predator closing in on a helpless morsel. As they approached he saw more detail; they were like crabs, covered in some sort of dark and shiny chitinous shell. He could not make out exactly where the head was, nor whether they had eyes, but he could certainly see the mouth and the fishhook teeth in the slowly working jaws. Segmented tentacles writhed through the water. The things had an odd, bobbing gait. They circled through the water towards him as if dancing in some dark courtship ritual.

With a terrible shock, Ecco realised that the screeching he could hear had words in it--words in some horrific alien tongue. He could understand nothing of what they were saying, but there was a dreadful hunger there, a dark, cold devouring urge that would leave nothing in its wake. The dolphin knew that these things, whatever they were, were responsible for the dead water... and the death of Orcus's pod. He backed away, keeping the monstrous things in constant view.

The attack came from below and to the side. Ecco's only warning was a momentary rush of water upon his flank; he reacted with the speed of a bullet, flinging himself out of the way as the third foe snapped and flailed through the water where he had been a moment ago. The body took over from the stricken mind, dashing and diving out of the way on sheer instinct. The monsters were fast--as fast as himself, possibly. Nothing mattered but instant survival. Ecco leaped right out of the water, as far as he could, as one of the monsters erupted right beneath him. He hit the waves with a crash and dived, fluking with all the speed he could muster. They gave chase, sticking close to his tail with terrible power.

The dolphin felt a sudden sick pain in his side, and he thought coolly, They got me--like they got Orcus. Blocking out the pain, he charged forward, and had the bitter pleasure of feeling his snout drive deep into the chest of the nearest foe. Segmented tentacles lashed his head and chest. He batted them away and dashed around the stunned monster, heading whence the others had gone--to the deep waters. The screeching in his ears drove out all conscious thought.

One of the monsters popped up before him, suddenly, from behind a rock. Ecco swerved and shot upwards into the sunlight again. He breached, and breached again--leaping through space, spending more time above the water than in it. Behind him the foe came rushing, silent as a shark, leaving only ripples in its wake. But Ecco was into his full speed now; almost flying each time he jumped, going several lengths above the water with each breach. The crashing of the water around him drowned out the sound of the monsters as they fell back.

He would have swum all the way to Sun River, had not the wounds started to slow him down. Ecco faltered and then shuddered down to first gear, feeling sharp stinging around his head and a deeper ache on his side, low down near the tail. He could no longer hear the alien screeching in the water. Half-sick with pain, the dolphin kept swimming, hardly caring where he was going as long as it were away from them.

At last, he was able to stop, his mind slowly beginning to work again. Ecco turned and looked back into the endless blue from where he had fled. There was no sign of the monsters, but there was a thin red taste in the water. Bending his body with some difficulty, he managed to take a look at the injury he had gotten from their jaws. It wasn't as bad as he had feared; there was a deep tear in his silvery skin, and the dark crimson muscle was visible beneath a thin remaining layer of subcutaneous fat. The muscle itself wasn't damaged; he could still swim perfectly well, though it stung. What Ecco was more concerned about was the blood from that and the shallow scratches criss-crossing his forequarters.

Bloodtrail.

The sharks would soon pick up on it. It was their job; they were angels of mercy to wounded beasts, finding them and dispatching them with swift, efficient haste. Ecco could probably fight off one or two blues and whitetips, but where one was, more would soon follow. Sharks could sense one part of blood in a million of seawater--and if a white pointer got wind of his injury... well, a whole pod would have difficulty dissuading one of those giants. One lone dolphin would stand little chance.

Ecco turned around and, with a cold detachment that surprised him, started to swim again. If he kept moving, it would make it more difficult for the sharks to track him, and sooner or later the wounds would have to stop bleeding. He was not incapacitated yet; there was still hope. The young dolphin surfaced to breathe, checked the position of the sun--it was getting on for evening again--and headed south, back towards Sapphire Bay across the open ocean. His tail stung.

Obviously, there was no way he was going to get through the straits--not with the creatures there. Having seen them in the flesh and escaped, Ecco had to agree with Orcus; there was no way dolphins could fight such things. The foe, whoever they were, were perfected killing machines. Even sharks paled in comparison with their infinite destructive capacity. Ecco remembered the dead waters in the straits, and shivered. How could it be possible--how had the monsters so completely stripped the fertile coastal sea of life?

He sighed heavily and surfaced for air. There was no way to reach the whales. What he needed to do now was return to the pod and tell Corse of the situation. Possibly the pod leader would agree to leave now, once he had heard Ecco's testimony. Corse might even know of another way to the northern seas, one which would bypass the straits.

Ecco cruised for a while, recovering from the shock. He kept moving more or less in a straight line, heading south. Once or twice small sharks came after him, but backed off when they realised that he was as large as they. A particularly persistent blue got rammed in the gills for its trouble, and thought better of it. By nightfall, the wound had more or less stopped bleeding. Ecco relaxed into the water, letting his tail carry him home.

Dolphins did not sleep. But, they did dream, a gift from their ancient landbound heritage. The mind could at times completely quit the body, which had its own instinct for survival and could safely be left alone for a short time. Ecco's eyes were open as he slid through the darkening waves, but he was seeing a different world.

The two dolphins swam through a sea that was midnight black, and very still. Their voices were like crystal bells, carrying for miles in the ancient stillness. They sang in a tongue he did not understand--a cosmic language, a tongue born in the heart of a star. He realised that the twain were life-mates. They swam very close. Krill shone around them, glowing with a bright white light.

No, not krill... they were stars, shining all around. Stars that were mirrored on the hot white bodies of the dolphins. Lights gleamed on their sides, shimmering points of light embedded in their very skin. The lovely creatures sang softly to each other as they swam through their intangible realm. From the darkness beyond unfolded a jewel--a globe of blue and green, like a great colored oyster-pearl. Great swathes of foam shimmered beneath the skin of the jewel, and at top and bottom white glistened like diamonds.

The dolphins swung towards the globe, and he realised that it was not a pearl up close, but something unimaginably huge seen from afar. And, with a sudden start of wonder, he realised that it was his own world, hanging suspended in the sea of stars. The song of the sky-dolphins washed over him, lovely and mournful--calling to him.

A shadow fell over the Earth that hung before him. He looked up and saw a dark, chitinous shape, so huge that it dwarfed the Earth as the Earth dwarfed him. The creatures... some sort of ship... The sky-dolphins fled glittering into the night. A giant limb reached down and enfolded the earth, muffling its light.

One by one, the stars winked out.

Ecco woke with a start, shivering in the chill water. He was still moving, but the quality of the sea had changed around him; everything was colder, bereft of the sun's last fading light. He had lost several hours in his dreaming. It had to be nearly midnight; the moon was up again, filling the sea with silver.

He could hear it again--a high, alien shrieking. Somewhere far in the distance it was, many miles back along the bloodtrail he had left. The wound had nearly closed by now, but Ecco still felt afraid. They were looking for him. He understood the meaning behind those alien words. The creatures were angry because he had escaped them, had successfully fought them off. They intended to hunt him down, come what may.

The dolphin cast a haunted glance back into the miles of empty pelagic ocean, and then sped onwards, fluking swiftly through the waters.

He made better time this time, despite his tiredness and hunger; he didn't stop to play around like before, but swam straight and true. He saw few creatures on his solitary journey; once a couple of porpoises passed by, but the little singers didn't respond to his hail--seeing the larger dolphin as a threat perhaps. Afraid of the creatures, Ecco turned and headed into the shallower waters where he could at least draw comfort from the presence of other living things: he would rather take his chances with the tiger sharks than be out in the open with nowhere to flee.

Once again, the sound of the creatures faded out behind him, but this time Ecco did not slow or rest up. He knew that they were there, somewhere behind him; they would not be shaken that easily. He did pause to consider whether it would be wise to rejoin the pod if he was leading the foe straight to them, but then he thought of Corse, faithfully keeping the pod in Sapphire Bay to wait for him... even when the creatures appeared at the mouth of the bay... the bottlenoses fighting to the death rather than leave a pod member behind...

They would do that, he knew. He might be a young and sometimes woolly-headed member of the group, but he was a member of the group, and Corse would not give up on him until it was absolutely clear he was not going to return. It was an indication of the horror of the creatures that Orcus had been driven to flee and leave his family behind. Ecco shuddered, knowing that to stay away was to doom the pod. He needed to tell them what he had seen, so that Corse and the others could come up with another plan of action. He swam faster, intent on putting as much water between himself and the foe as possible so that when he finally arrived in Sapphire Bay, they would have plenty of time to get together and leave.

Ecco remained alert for sharks, but was surprised to find that the coastal waters were for the moment free of large predators. He managed to grab a few fish as he passed over reefs, but the few sharks he did see were not interested in him or the shoals. The water was full of whispering. News traveled fast, it seemed. Ecco remembered the blue shark that had fled screaming into the ocean.

The moon was just about setting when he saw the first of the landmarks; the tide pools that lay before the cape. Ecco's home bay was just around that cape; he only had a few more miles to go. Thoughts of home gladdened his heart and sped his tail--thoughts of Star. He had not allowed himself to feel fear or uncertainty before, having to concentrate all his being on staying alive, but now he felt able to be afraid. The tide was turning again, waning with the moonset.

He paused to listen at the end of the tide pool stretch. The seas were silent. No sign of the creatures anywhere. Peace and tranquility surrounded Ecco like a cloud. Unconsciously his pace slowed again as he approached the cape; it was nearing dawn now, and the moon was half below the horizon, a liquid disc of silver. Ecco surfaced and blew perfunctorily before diving again and listening. Nothing. Not a sound.

...not a sound. His heart began to beat fast again. He could hear nothing at all, save the soft wash of the water against his sides. For the rest, the sea was silent as the grave. Feeling a sudden sheer panic, Ecco dived, clicking in a search for life--any life. These were coastal waters! He should be able to hear the rustling of bottom-feeding fish amongst the weeds--the skittering of crabs on the coral--even echolocation from the porpoises he knew lived among the tidepools. He could hear nothing.

The rocky floor of the tide pool was bare. Bare rock, without even a film of algae to cover it. The sand was pale and still in the moonlight. Worm casts eroded slowly in the current, their makers nowhere to be seen.

Ecco began to swim faster. Faster and faster he went, until he was flying through the water as if pursued. He quit the tide pools without stopping for breath, and rounded the cape in a haze of bubbles. As he swung round into the familiar surroundings of Sapphire Bay, the sun burst out above the horizon in a blast of gold and pink.

Ecco ignored it. Fluking strongly, he dashed into the bay, and, careless of monsters, cried out for the others. "Corse! Ai! Star! Where are you!" Only the echoes of his cry came back to him, informing him that the bay was as empty and barren as the straits had been. There wasn't even a hint of blood in the water. He swept over the sandbanks, nearly beaching himself, and dashed into the deeper waters where the dolphins often congregated. Even the cliff face was empty of life.

Ecco swam round the entire bay and then turned back into the middle. Nothing--no sign left to tell where they had gone. Shocked and terrified and now entirely alone, he drew in his fins and screamed out a single word, shrill with delphine rage.

"Noooooo!"

And then the distraught dolphin heard the distant shrieking start again... 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Ecco nearly froze in fear right there and then and, had the foe caught up with him, his story would have been much shortened. Something saved him--he caught sight of a movement in the sand, and dived swiftly to see what it was--hoping against hope that something had survived the mysterious holocaust in his home bay.

The sand erupted in a little fountain as something fought its way up from below. Ecco drew back a little but remained where he was. Though the shrieking was still audible, he judged that the monsters were as yet a long way off. There was still time.

A bright red claw appeared through the sand, and long antennae. Then, with a heave, the hermit crab freed itself from its subterranean refuge. The mollusc brushed itself down, struggling to hold up the heavy nautilus shell it had appropriated, and then caught sight of him looking at it. In the blink of an eye, the hermit crab had disappeared into its shell, which rocked gently on the sand with the empty current.

Ecco nudged the shell with his snout. It rolled over onto its side, but there was no more sign of the occupant. "Please," he said desperately, "come out. I need to talk to you."

There was a stony silence from the shell.

"Please, I'm begging you. I won't hurt you--I promise! I... I just want to know what happened here." The crab made no movement, and he let out a shrill whimper of frustration. "Where did they go? Where did they take my family? Answer me!"

The shell rocked a little, and then a cautious eye peered out. It withdrew again quickly, suspicious. Ecco nudged it again, rolling it over on the pale sand, and was rewarded with a few choice words in the molluscidae reef dialect.

"Scat, mammal," the crab snapped, scrabbling for a hold. It righted itself with difficulty, struggling with the weight of its borrowed shell.

"Tell me what happened," Ecco begged. "They came, didn't they? Where did they take everyone?"

The crab regarded him out of its odd stalked eyes, antennae twitching grumpily. "Didn't see nothin'. Piss off an' leave me alone."

"You must have seen something--you were here! Please, don't you have any idea where they went?" Ecco ventured too close and had to draw back as a claw waved perilously close to his snout.

The crab scuttled backwards away from him, holding its claw up like a sword. "Tol' ya, didn't see nothin'."

He sighed heavily, and let himself sag a little in the water. "Look," he said tiredly, "I know you're scared of me--I know you're probably scared of the creatures too--but if you tell me what happened, where they went, anything!--I'll try and stop them. I'm going to find my family if it kills me." He paused, regarding the crab out of one eye. It had relaxed and was looking at him with a peculiar kind of confused fascination. "Just tell me what you saw," he said slowly, "and I'll go away and leave you alone. In fact, I'll--"

The crab let out a yelp of fear as his jaws clamped around the nautilus shell. Ecco lifted the mollusc up and shook it violently, nearly shaking the startled mollusc right out of its protective carapace. It clung on by a claw. "Shake it out of you if I have to," Ecco growled from behind a mouthful of nautilus.

"L-l-lemme g-go..." the crab stuttered, too dizzy to try and crawl back into its wildly moving shell.

"Tell me!" Ecco whistled shrilly.

"I'll t-tell you--just stop sh-sh-shaking me..."

He stopped, amidst a cloud of bubbles that had been shaken up by his movement, but he didn't put down the shell. The crab clambered right inside again, with something like indecent haste. A few miniscule droppings floated in the water, terror-induced. Ecco was actually holding the shell with extreme care, not wishing to crush it in his jaws; the crab didn't have to know that. "What happened? It was those things, wasn't it?"

The crab had retreated so far into its shell that he heard its small voice coming from somewhere near the back of his mouth. "If you knew, why'd'ja ask me?" it asked in a huffy tone of voice.

"My pod--did you see--?"

"Yeah, yeah." The mollusc sounded grumpy again, its panic having abated. "I saw. They took 'em. There was this thing and it sucked up everything..."

"A... thing?"

"I dunno what it was! Just a thing. A really BIG thing." Ecco remembered that the molluscidae, living as they did in a world of giants, had no eyes for anything much larger than a grouper. A large shark, or one of the creatures, would appear so vast to them that they would be unlikely to perceive it as living. By luck or good judgement he appeared to have found an unusually intelligent specimen in this crab. The crab scrabbled, somewhere inside its shell, and then went on reluctantly. "Your lot were took alive. Can't say I miss 'em, noisy squeaking things. Couldn't catch no shrimp when you lot were in the area, you scared 'em all right off."

"There aren't any shrimp to catch now," Ecco sighed miserably. "You didn't see where they took the dolphins?"

"Didn't see nothin' about that. Guess it were outa the bay. Now put me down." A claw waved gingerly out of the shell, disliking the three feet of empty space between it and the sand.

Ecco gently deposited the nautilus shell on the floor of the bay. The crab came out slowly, scrabbled on the sand with relief, and then righted itself with some difficulty. It wobbled off across the empty sand with an air of freezing dignity, obviously pretending hard that the entire incident had never happened.

"Get out of here," Ecco called to it. "Those things are coming back." He received no answer, though he fancied he perceived an added hurriedness in the mollusc's unsteady gait.

Turning, he listened, finding that the screeching was louder now. They were coming for him. Ecco realised with a start that there was only one way out of the bay--he would have to swim towards the things, maybe go right past them. Well... he had gotten away from them once before, and he was no longer leaving bloodtrail. He knew better than to look for a hiding place; there was nowhere to hide now, not with all the weeds and plants gone as well as the animals. And he couldn't creep into a cave or bury himself in the sand; he needed to breathe air regularly. The dolphin growled in irritation.

He began to swim towards the bay entrance, letting his body do all the work while his mind worked furiously on a task of its own. An entire bay, and the straits, and the coral reef! And before that, Orcus's pod and presumably Sun River too! These things weren't just hunting. There was more to it than that.

Ecco realised he had no plan of action. Where could he go? Somehow he had to keep on with Corse's original plan--he had to find Sendarian, or at least somebody older and wiser than himself. He did know one thing: he couldn't seek out other dolphins. Orcus, by coming to the Sapphire Bay pod after escaping, had led the monsters right to Ecco's own family, and while he couldn't find it in himself to blame the Sun River dolphin, he didn't want to do the same to some other unsuspecting group. But there was something special about him, all the same--right now, Ecco had a feeling that he knew more about the monsters than anybody else. He had seen them and survived--even Orcus hadn't got a close look, if his story held true.

The screeching was loud now, and he was at the mouth of the bay. Ecco sent out sonar clicks, and the echoes coming back showed him the monsters heading straight for him, arrowing through the water like angels of death. Too close! As before, the dolphin had a split second to react: he leaped up high, as high as he could go. The things rushed through the water beneath him.

He screamed in shock as something raked the air above his head. Another one--flying like the gulls! Was there anything these monsters couldn't do? Throwing up his tail, Ecco felt the flukes slam into something hard that cracked, and then he crashed back into the water. He was swimming instantly, arrowing through the sea as only a dolphin could. The foe raced after him, silent death in the water. Ecco tasted blood, but knew it wasn't his own this time; the savaged remains of a porpoise turned gently in the current as he dashed past. Two of the monsters turned aside and set upon the body with ferocious hunger--he heard the growls and the tearing, and then the terrible screeching as they started to fight each other over the scrap.

They compete, then, he thought dispassionately, and they're very hungry. He might be able to escape them if he led them onto something else... No. He remembered the dead waters, and he knew that he couldn't just let them do it again.

They were out into the open waters now, and the foe showed no signs of slowing down. Ecco realised that he would soon tire at this speed. He raced onwards, forcing his body to work harder, realised he needed air. He jumped, gasped in a breath, and felt the air pressure on his back change as the airborne ones screamed towards him. They crashed into the water, just missing his tail as he sped onwards. Ecco dived, seeing the dark blue-black before him as the continental shelf fell away. The foe were actually outpacing him now; he swerved like a panicked mackerel as one of them came up on his right hand side. He needed air again.

They passed a blue shark, and instantly the screeching reached a new pitch. The luckless predator was instantly set upon by the monsters as it turned to flee; Ecco sped past as the blood cloud billowed out into the water. He had no time to feel sorry for the shark, because two of the foe were still after him. The momentary distraction had bought him a little time, at any rate. He surfaced, gasped down air, then dived again.

He was starting to tire now; he knew he was slowing down, and forced himself to go faster. His muscles were becoming starved of oxygen despite the frequent breaths he had taken; dolphins were very good at storing air in their blood for the swift bursts of action needed to escape a shark, but never before had Ecco needed to maintain this sort of speed for this long. He needed a new plan--but what could he do, out in the open ocean with nowhere to hide? Eyes rolling in terror, he sped onwards, hearing the screeching of the monsters as they stayed put only a length behind him.

Syuuii!

Strength was starting to leave him. He had to breathe. Ecco jumped again, a long, low curve; his belly only just cleared the surface of the water. He took a shaky breath while still airborne and was then back in the water again. The monsters had gained on him even with that tiny delay.

That dispassionate voice of logic spoke up again. Dive, it said.

Ecco didn't even think about it. He jumped once more, took another breath--practically filling himself with precious oxygen--and then flung up his tail and headed for the depths at the nearly vertical. Instinct drove his actions--but instinct with a strong grain of logic. Fish stayed at a certain depth, that he knew for certain. Sharks would chase, but generally only along the horizontal plane; they would give up quickly if you forced them to work at an altitude at which they were not accustomed. That was whale thinking, Ecco remembered: dolphins did not often get the chance to explore the lower levels of their world.

He did not allow himself to wonder whether the monsters would be affected by depth, since they had already proven they could travel in air as well as water. Ecco had no time to consider such things; less than a second lay between himself and destruction. He had to chance it--anything to make the monsters break off their pursuit and get him a few moments to rest.

Then again, if they could adapt to different depths--if they were as at home in the water as they seemed to be--Ecco was probably going to die. At the least, he vowed grimly to himself, I'll deprive them of the chance to feast on my dead body. Somehow the thought was strangely comforting--it gave him something upon which to concentrate.

Down, down... away from the light and the blues of his pelagic realm. Below him lay blue darkening through a whole spectrum of marine shades, a chromatic fantasy. Cerulean faded to cyan around him, then down through Prussian to navy. And, in front of his bottle nose, hovered always the straight-down-dark, the blackness. There was no sandy bottom to this water; nothing but an infinite descent into cold. The whales called it the Crushing Dark, he remembered.

The monsters were still coming. Water began to press hard on Ecco's sides, reminding him that the pressure would grow and continue to grow. It was becoming fast colder now, as the last of the sunlight fell behind. The shrieks of the monsters filled his ears, and he drove his tail harder, pushing forward into the black. It stretched out before him, velvety and deep as the sky. He remembered calf-tales on summer nights, about how the deep had its own stars--fish that carried light with them. So, there is a sky down here too, he thought. Just the same--dark, and cold, and unreachable.

He was starting to suffer from the pressure. Never before had he gone this far down. The darkness enfolded him like a shroud; it rustled across his skin with the touch of kelp fronds, barely tangible, like a dream. He wondered whether he would get to see the stars at the bottom, or whether his air would run out first. The monsters did not seem to be slowing...

Down...

Ecco slowed. The water crushed into his sides like a vice. It was hard simply to move now, let alone maintain his breakneck pace. He blinked; he could see nothing at all. It was almost like being dead might be, if he had the power to imagine that with any accuracy. The shrieking of the monsters was loud in his ears, and he knew they were coming up fast behind him. A slender stream of bubbles escaped him; he couldn't see, but he imagined them winding their way up to the surface like a thread of silver, back through the rainbow of blue to return at last to the plane of air from whence they had come.

He felt the pressure increase slightly as the foe approached; the wash of water against his body caused by their swift movement.

And then, with surprising eagerness the fighter's heart in him began to beat. Caught in a wash of rage Ecco turned on his own length, facing upwards to meet the beasts. He could see them with his sonar now; they were coming down like thunder, searing through the dark, still water with jaws already agape. A squealing, scraping cry of challenge escaped the dolphin, and he drew his tail in, ready to charge.

A giant bulk passed by him--something as huge and wonderful as the sky itself. It filled the whole of the water; the wash of its passing knocked him tail-over-tip through the darkness. The echo of Ecco's little snarl of challenge faltered and died as it was answered: a rumble, turning to a roar and then a swiftly escalating screech, with power enough to shake the water for miles around.

One of the creatures managed to make its escape back upwards to the light, swimming with the speed of a mako shark. The other was not fast enough as it turned round, and it was caught in the gigantic jaws of the sperm whale as they slammed to. Ecco distinctly heard the brittle crunch, like cracking nautilus shells, and a moment later he tasted something acrid on the water--the blood of the thing, bitter and alien. Its dying cry hammered into his brain.

Unable to do any more, Ecco waited numbly as the swirling currents carried the blood of the creature around and past him. He felt the wash of water again as the whale turned ponderously in his direction, and remembered everything bad he had ever heard about sperm whales--the biggest and most powerful predators in the entire sea. 


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Ecco was silent; stunned. His heart was still hammering with the aftermath of the chase. He had never felt this shocked and frightened; never before in his life. If the monsters had been just a little quicker! --But had he escaped from the hook to be caught in the net? He became aware of the pressing need for air, and turned towards the surface, but something dark and unimaginably huge rolled over and lazily blocked his way. Remembering tales he had heard of the ferocity of the sperm whales, and the way in which those giant jaws had crushed the too-slow foe, Ecco backfinned in the dark.

A deep and ancient voice, patient and sleepy with the strength of fifty years and more, rumbled through the water all around him.

"Th'art a long way from thy home, little starbrow."

Ecco relaxed just a little; there was no anger in the voice of the whale, just a kind of lazy, benevolent curiosity.

"Yes, sir," he said deferentially, unsure how else he should react to the monster. Dolphins tended to get along with the great sperm whales--but only because they were generally too small to be noticed by such leviathans. Then, too, the sperm whales spent much of their time in the lightless depths, where dolphins never swam unless driven to it. Ecco was trespassing on the whales' territory.

The sperm whale, though, said nothing regarding his narrow escape, or the monsters that had been chasing him. Ecco felt the wash of water against his body as a vast bulk turned slowly in the darkness, and for a wild moment he considered a dash for escape--but the whale forestalled him.

"'Tis a long way down here for the likes of thee, little starbrow, and th'art short of breath by now. Wiltow ascend with me?"

Ecco didn't see what else he could do; the sperm whale could have easily bitten him in two. Certainly it was one of the hugest and most powerful creatures in the entire sea; and, too, it seemed to dislike the monsters as much as he did at this time. They would hardly dare to approach him while he swam at the side of the giant, and indeed he could not hear so much as the faintest echo of their screeching in the deep waters. While the whale was well disposed towards him, it would be useful to take advantage of his gigantic protector. Without speaking, Ecco fell into formation with the whale as it began to move, slowly and sedately in the direction of the far-off surface. Soon the first faint light began to fall on them both, and he saw a gleam of far-off sunlight reflected in the whale's dark abyssal eye.

The sperm whale swam slower than Ecco would have liked: he was desperate to breathe by now. But whenever he tried to forge ahead, the great eye rolled alarmingly in his direction so that, intimidated, he fell back into line again. The water continued to lighten slowly, and he was soon able to get his first good look at his rescuer: he wasn't disappointed. The whale seemed even bigger visually than it had on his sonar--it was a true giant of the seas, and a hundred dolphins could have fit within that cavernous frame. The whale's hide was crisscrossed with the circular scars of kraken, and Ecco saw that it was a male.

The surface twinkled above them, but the whale did not speed its pace even in the slightest; it was as inexorable as the tides. At last he could bear their slow progress no more, and shot past the behemoth like an arrow from a bow. He broke through the water with an almighty leap, feeling dizzy; he took a great ragged breath, then another almost immediately after as his oxygen-starved muscles demanded more replenishment. Exhausted, he hung at the water's surface as the sperm whale floated up beneath him, an immense scarred shadow dappled with late sunlight and the marks of a hundred blind battles.

The sperm whale blew, a roaring exhalation that shot spray many feet into the air and made Ecco's ears ring. He was silent for several long minutes, only lying in the water with his great dark eye fixed thoughtfully on Ecco. Slowly the dolphin felt his body returning to normal: the desperate drive to breathe was fading. He turned towards the whale, quailing a little at the stern look in the gargantuan eye; and then he waited.

The whale paused a few more seconds before he spoke. His words were as ponderous as his bulk, and had much of the same sleepy confidence; he feared nothing in the sea, and didn't care who knew it. "My apologies for trying thee so, little starbrow, but to rise with speed after such a dive would have killed thee outright."

"Thank you, sir," Ecco answered uneasily--uncertain what exactly to make of the leviathan before him. The whale's tone was jovial almost, certainly friendly, but he was intimidated by the size and by the slow, dignified prose. Corse had often warned him away from speaking to whales without good cause, even the small and silly minke whales that they occasionally saw near the bay. Not our type, whales--they know too much about things better left forgotten.

The whale rolled one eye towards him, seeming amused at his nervousness. "I would have words with thee a while, cousin," came the deep rumble, mildly. "Let us swim together."

Still no reference to the monsters... Greatly wondering, Ecco stayed by the whale's side as the great beast began to swim, steadily south. Bow-waves trailed out either side of the huge wedge-shaped snout, the current thus formed unsettling the dolphin who had to move a length or so away in order to avoid being pulled under. They were quiet for a long time, hearing only the smooth hissing of the water against their bodies, and the occasional slap of spray as the sperm whale's flukes came down flat on the surface.

"Sir," Ecco whistled finally, keeping his tone as deferential as he could, "thank you for saving me. I--I'm sorry if I interrupted you--you know, at your, uh, meal--"

There was an amused rumble from the whale.

Ecco paused, waiting for a response. "I'm Ecco," he said at last, wondering whether there was something else he was supposed to say. Corse had neglected to inform him of the accepted etiquette when addressing a sperm whale who had just saved your life.

The whale did not slow. "I am called Castor."

There was another long pause. Ecco kept pace beside the majestic hunter. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask a question, when his rescuer spoke again.

"Tell me, little starbrow, for I am curious--what manner of creature was it that came after thee?" There was a strange tone in Castor's voice, as if this was in some way a test. Ecco remembered Corse's advice: Be Sincere--he hoped that that held true for sperm whales as well as blue whales. In any case, he did not wish to lie to this great beast.

"Sir, I don't know," he answered softly. "But they took my family, and they've been chasing me ever since. That's the second time I had to flee from them..."

"Hr'm!" Castor whuffed out air, seeming satisfied with the answer. "I thought so, I thought so. So, they have returned at last... I knew something was wrong. There is whispering in the deeps. Well, well, this is a poor omen indeed..."

Omen? "Do you--do you know about them?" Ecco whistled timidly. "The creature you destroyed--you crushed it--have you seen them before?"

"Nay, not I, little starbrow." The whale rolled, languorously trailing the tip of one fin through the still evening air. "I have never seen them, but yet I know them for what they are. My people still sing songs under the dark heavens--songs of things long past." The dark eye turned towards him for a moment. "We have long memories, cousin."

"So--what are they?" Ecco asked, gathering courage from the whale's readiness to answer. "Where did they come from and why did they take my pod? Who is this foe?"

"Not foe, little cousin, but Foe. We know them by no other name." Castor turned slowly in the water, altering his direction a little; Ecco hurried to catch up. "That is who they are. Thy other questions--the what, the where and the why--they are not so easy to answer. And ye may not wish to hear the answer."

Ecco felt a heat in him. "Sir," he said, "they kidnapped my family. I want to fight them. I will fight them, if I have to."

"Hr'm!" Castor blew again, thunderously; it reminded Ecco that he too needed air, and he took a breath of his own beside the whale's mountainous shoulder. "So ye intend to oppose the Foe," the whale remarked in his slow, sleepy voice. "That is good, good... but not a task to be undertaken lightly, with a lot of chatter."

"I'll do what's needed," Ecco said bravely. "Just tell me what you know... sir," he added swiftly.

Castor did not appear to have noticed his momentary slip. The sperm whale dipped underwater with barely a ripple, having finished his long breath. Ecco followed, and they cruised together through the open water, ten feet or so below the surface.

"The Foe came here before," Castor said, "many years ago. None there are among us who could remember so far back, but the songs have been passed down. My people no longer sing them, but the gentle humpbacks do, underneath the full moon. We honor the memory of one who defeated the Foe in their own realm." The whale glanced towards him. "A dolphin, little starbrow, and one who bore the markings of a lone-swimmer."

"A dolphin? A dolphin defeated the Foe?" This was news to Ecco. He let out an excited squeal. "Then I can fight them! Tell me how!"

"Alas," Castor said heavily, "I know not. But I will sing thee that which I do know, if that is thy wish. It may lead thee into blacker places than the Crushing Dark before thy family is freed."

"Tell me," Ecco said softly.

The whale glanced at him again, then slowly rose up towards the surface. He blew again, explosively--Ecco saw his huge sides shiver as he took in more air, and heard the rushing of it in the giant lungs. Slow and graceful, Castor slipped down into the water again, and Ecco swam beside him.

"The tale of Tidesinger," Castor said at last, by way of introduction, and then, to Ecco's wonder and fascination, the great sperm whale began to sing.

It was a long time ago, and the world was a very different place. Different beasts swam the seas, and there were different shores along the coasts. The shark-god Carcharodon lived, then, feeding his insatiable hunger on the whales who were then new to the waters. Into this far-off time was born one whom we know now only as Tidesinger.

He was the son of a dolphin who carried stars upon his back and, though he swam with the pack as any dolphin would in the seas that held Carcharodon the Mighty, he had a great urge to explore. Often he would go off by himself, and return with the scent of unfamiliar waters. The others tried to prevent him, but he would not be dissuaded--the moment someone's eyes were elsewhere, Tidesinger was gone. Legend says that he learned the secret lore of the Ocean, that he hid himself in a deep cleft and actually spoke with Carcharodon himself, but in truth we shall never know.

By the time that he was an adult and of mating age, Tidesinger had many great deeds to his name, and he was fearless and strong. Stars shone on his body, the legacy of his strange father. Some have even said that they glowed under the moonlight, just a little.

So lived the dolphin pod, young and new under the stars. And so lived Tidesinger, never quite an outcast but certainly looked down upon by his tribe's elders. He cared nothing for that: he was strong and brave and could outswim anything in the sea.

One fateful night, there appeared a new star in the sky, and as the peoples of the waters watched, it fell. It landed somewhere in the far north, where the ice floes crack and creak and the great blue whales sing songs of sleep, and there was a great rushing and a wave. And nothing more was heard for a long time--many months indeed.

But then things started to happen. Creatures disappeared without trace, without leaving even a scale or song to mark their passing. Had it been one or two--but entire families went, dolphins and whales alike.

And then the Foe made their first appearance, hungry and dreadful as even Carcharodon was not. They raged through the seas, turning the water red, and everything fell before them. Even mighty Carcharodon was destroyed, and though this broke the ancient power of the shark-people and made the waters safe for our descendants, the Foe were more terrible still than the shark-god had been, and they filled the waters with a great wailing and sorrow.

Tidesinger saw from afar, from the hot waters of a southern bay, and he was angry. When the Foe came for him, he sang songs which he had learned on his long travels. The legends say that he could freeze them in place with a song, or even burst them apart with a word. He fought his way forward through waters stained with blood, and then he dived deeper than any had gone before, past the krakens and the strange angler fish, right to the bottom of the deepest ocean which is dead and dark and too cold even to freeze solid. And there he found the Foe.

What marvel was done there we do not know--the whales can go little more than halfway down, and we have never seen the seabed. But word has come up, little by little, over the years. Tidesinger found the Foe's lair, and he entered, and he destroyed them utterly. Defeated, the remaining Foe fled upwards through the dark water, and Tidesinger gave chase. Swift as a shark he followed them up through black into blue. The Foe, greatly fearing, quit the waters and made to escape into the heavens.

"And then?" Ecco prompted, after a few minutes. His skin was still tingling with the power of Castor's mighty voice; he had felt it rumbling in his ribcage, shaking the water like thunder. But the whale had broken off suddenly, and now swam in silence.

"I know not," Castor answered at long last. There was resignment in the great whale's tone. "I suppose they escaped after all. There is more to the tale than I can tell thee; the lore is lost after so long. The humpbacks sing of Tidesinger calling down the moon, but--" He snorted heavily and surfaced to blow again. When Ecco's ears had stopped ringing, the whale went on, "--Humpbacks are poets and given to wild embellishment. I do not see how, even with his power of voice, Tidesinger could sing the moon to do his bidding."

Ecco frowned slightly, wondering--there it was again, that odd idea of singing to the moon. Corse had mentioned it. Irritated, he rose and breathed. All this mystic stuff was making his head spin... stars, sky-dolphins, lone-swimmers, the moon...

Syuuii!

Corse had mentioned this! He remembered now--Corse had said that a lone-swimmer had driven back the Foe! Had he meant Tidesinger? Did the dolphins too have their legends about this mysterious being? Ecco felt his heart thumping in his chest at the very thought. Tidesinger had been a lone-swimmer--his own father was one. Perhaps the lone-swimmers knew something more, something Corse and Castor could not tell him.

"I have heard some of this story before," he said reluctantly, "just recently. Castor... tell me, please... is it really true?"

"About Tidesinger?" The whale curled his tail-flukes in the cetacean equivalent of a shrug. "If only we knew... it is likely that he was a myth created to explain a simple delphine alliance, a figurehead for an ancient near-forgotten war." There was a pause. "But for myself, I believe. There are few things in this world upon which both whales and sharks agree, but this legend is one of them."

"I wish I knew more," Ecco said with a sigh. "I'm sure that defeating the Foe has something to do with this singing-to-the-moon business. But Castor--do you know of anyone who might be able to tell me how to fight them?"

"So ye still want to fight, after everything I have told thee." Castor dipped his head slightly. "Ye have courage enough for ten, little starbrow. I must respect that." He paused, and then let out a stream of bubbles. "Yes..." he said thoughtfully. "Yes, there is one who might know more--but seeking out that one will be a test in itself, young Ecco. I would not do so willingly."

Ecco quailed. If the mighty sperm whale was afraid, then what should he do?

"Ye must travel south," Castor said slowly, paying no attention to the dolphin's unease. "Into the warmer waters, and long past the equatorial line. There is a great place where the rocks are high and the seals chatter noisily in the tide-pools. The Cape of Good Hope, it was called once. There ye shall find one called Greshruk the Slayer, who, if legend holds true, was a calf when Tidesinger swam the seas. From Greshruk ye may learn more--if ye survive the encounter. Ye will need all thy wits about thee."

"Greshruk the Slayer," Ecco whistled carefully, paying particular attention to the way the strange name sounded. It didn't sound too good. "How will I know him when I see him?"

"I know not," Castor answered heavily. "I have never seen the Slayer, nor do I know who or what Greshruk is exactly. The sharks hold the Slayer in great reverence, but they will not speak of such things to air-breathers. When you reach the cape, ask the seals for help--they live their lives alongside Greshruk and will know the best thing to do."

Ecco nodded slowly, thinking it through. "South, to the Cape of Good Hope, and then ask the seals about Greshruk the Slayer. Got it." He blinked up at the huge whale. "Castor... thank you for everything."

The sperm whale looked at him for a long moment, then rose and blew again. "If the Foe falls, young Ecco, I think it is we who will be singing thy thanks." He paused. "I must leave thee now, cousin. A lone-swimmer am I by chance and not by choice. I shall head east now across the ocean, to rejoin my own pod."

Ecco nodded in understanding.

"Good-bye, cousin," Castor said formally, "and good luck with thy quest. I shall sing thy name to the moon, and--who knows--perhaps she will listen."

The great whale turned in the water, graceful as a bird in the air, and slowly swam away. Ecco watched the gigantic shape fade into shadow until it was gone. "Bye, Castor," he whistled softly.

There was not a sound of Foe in the water. Above, in the sky, the stars shone like beacons. Ecco poked his snout out of the water and saw the constellation that mirrored his own stars; it was shining very brightly. The moon was just peeking above the horizon.

He turned, following his instincts, and began to swim swiftly south, through the open water. 


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Days passed like shadows in the water, barely noticeable, flickering over him for a moment and then vanishing into the expanse of blue that stretched out at his tail. Ecco swam tirelessly, hardly pausing even to feed; he snapped up mackerel and sardines from schools as he passed. The sun rose, set and rose again. And ever his tail carried him south, following the faint elusive warmth that lay somewhere far ahead.

He heard the Foe again once or twice, but they were far to the north and the screeching had a baffled tone about it that was somehow heartening. Ecco had an idea that they were still looking for him, but it seemed they had lost his trail when he had met up with Castor. His wounds were well-nigh healed now; there was a faint white mark on his silvery hide where the Foe had slashed at his tail, that was all.

It was tiring, swimming so far without rest, but the waters were surprisingly calm and Ecco found himself almost enjoying it after the first few days. His body was toughening up, becoming accustomed to long exercise. He had gained one or two more battle-scars; once he had run into a man-o'-war medusa which had left a weal across his back, and a couple of times he'd lost a bit of his hide to one of the funny little cookiecutter sharks that took bites out of larger animals and then swam away hell-for-leather. Soon, he thought wryly to himself, I'll really look like a lone-swimmer: scruffy and battered.

For better or worse, he was becoming accustomed to the idea of being one of the lone dolphins. He was desperately lonely, of course--he missed Star dreadfully, and would have been glad even to see bossy Klik or Corse during the long days. But there were other animals around, and they generally seemed glad to see him. A long-tailed thresher shark, a little over two thirds his size, exchanged a few wary but polite words on the subject of Foe, and he was pleased to be able to reassure the shy fish-eater.

As he progressed south, he began to hear singing again from afar--whales again. Ecco never got close enough to see the creatures, so he wasn't sure what species they were exactly, but they sounded like humpbacks. He remembered Castor telling him that the humpbacks were poets, and the long cascades of sound that spilled through the water of an evening certainly sounded like poetry--even if he could understand very little of the archaic, beautiful tongue. Ecco began to feel very wise and, when a pod of pilot whales actually hailed him and requested to hear the news from the north, he felt as if his cup was full.

But always, when he relaxed and started to think that he could enjoy the wandering life, he heard the faint far screeches of his alien enemy. It reminded him at odd intervals that the danger had not gone away: the Foe were still searching. The waters here were full of life, which was reassuring, but he could never forget what lay behind, and the fact that he still had no way to fight them, no weak spot to approach.

He saw no really large sharks, and for that he was thankful. He kept to the open ocean, remembering that the bigger predators tended to stick closer to the shore, but there was always the possibility that he would run into a rogue white pointer or a tiger on one of their great meanderings. Ecco kept an eye out for turtles, knowing that tiger sharks liked to feed on them, and he steered clear of islands or reefs where the abundance of life would draw the bigger hunters. The pickings were poorer in the open sea, but he felt better about stopping to hunt.

On the morning of his eighth day at sea, the day dawned cloudy and overcast, and there was a slight fog on the choppy water. It soon cleared up and the sky became hot and clear, but when Ecco rose to breathe he felt an odd tension in the air that reminded him of summer storms in Sapphire Bay. He quickened his pace, feeling the warm southern waters on his skin; he had to be close now.

At last, around midday, he saw his first seal.

It was surprisingly large--he had heard that seals were much smaller than dolphins, and had had in mind something about the size of a big cod, and furry. In fact, the seal was almost the size of a porpoise, and very sleek. It was diving through a school of small fish whose name he did not know, and it seemed to be very good at it. Ecco waited a respectful distance away, not wishing to alarm or offend the creature at its hunting.

Presently the seal broke off feeding, and caught sight of him. With a yelp of alarm it turned and made to flee; Ecco called out to it quickly. "Wait! I need to talk to you!"

The seal hesitated, hovering just within eyesight. "Tursiops?" it asked suspiciously, eyeing him. Its eyes were big and brown and had a faintly startled expression that was not helped by the pale spectacle-rings around them.

Ecco blinked. The word was not one he knew. He hoped that seals spoke delphine, because otherwise he was stuck. "Dolphin," he whistled carefully, introducing himself. "Er... can you understand me?"

The seal seemed to relax a little; it swam forward and came up to him, examining him with a critical air. He said nothing, just watched as the marine mammal swam all around him and even poked its nose into his side in what appeared to be investigative curiosity. At last, it backed off and flicked around him to come up in front of his nose, looking at him with its big, interested eyes.

"Ha, dolphin!" the seal said, in an excruciating accent. "Yes, yes, understand. You far-far from home, yes? Is long way you come?"

"A long way, yes," Ecco answered. "Actually--I wondered if you could help me. My name is Ecco."

"Quiahuit am I," the seal replied, "is me. You come from north, Ecco-dolphin? From cold water?"

"I--yes, that's right." He surfaced to breathe, accompanied by the curious seal who was now looking at him with avid interest.

"Ha!" it said, in a tone of triumph. "You hear news?" Lowering its voice conspiratorially, it went on, "Dark things in water, they say--from north. But you-you come from there, yes? You have known of it?"

"I saw them," Ecco said with a heavy sigh. "That's why I'm here, in fact."

The seal regarded him with a suspicious look. "Why?"

"I'm looking for somebody. Greshruk the--wait!"

The seal vanished into the blue like a specter. He heard the echoes of its bark of alarm as they spread out through the water, becoming thin and finally vanishing. Grimly Ecco chased after the fleeing mammal, following its trail of panicked bubbles and the thin taste of fear it left in the water. "Please, wait!" he called out. "I just want to know--who exactly is Greshruk the Slayer?"

Suddenly he came face-to-face with the seal, who had stopped dead and now watched him with a severe look on its face. Ecco backfinned nervously, though he was much bigger than it was. "You do not want to know," the seal said coldly. "Greshruk not for you, funny one. We be one bite, maybe two for Greshruk..." It looked him over again. "You--maybe three. No good for you."

"I need to speak to Greshruk," Ecco said insistently. "It's to do with these things. I think Greshruk may be able to help me. Do you know where I can find him?"

"Ha!" The seal glowered at him. "Quiahuit is not stupid, Ecco-dolphin. Is no way to talk to Greshruk--not if want to keep blood in body. Slayer only helps self. You get out--go quick, fly on home. No good, no good..."

"I can't go home," Ecco sighed. "Listen--please--the Foe--the creatures took my family. I know Greshruk the Slayer knows something about them, or maybe even how to defeat them. Can't you at least point me in the right direction? I promise I won't bother you again if you do."

The seal blinked at him. "You crazy fish or something?"

"I'm not leaving these waters until I at least see Greshruk," he answered. "Maybe I am crazy, but I can't give up now--my pod are depending on me."

"Ha," the seal said in disgust. "Well... you come-come with me now. I know friend, he show you Greshruk maybe. I think you be changing mind when you see. Greshruk... not friendly type."

"If you can just show me Greshruk, that's all I could ask for," Ecco answered politely.

The seal blinked at him again, then appeared to give in and turned away. He followed it as it swam quickly through the water, glancing nervously left and right. Soon he tasted sand in the water, and realized that they were heading for the shallower continental shelf--where the sharks were. Ecco hung back nervously, and the seal glanced back. "Having second thoughts, crazy fish?"

"Not yet," he said with a tight grin.

"Is your head." Turning away again, the seal swam on without speaking, and presently Ecco saw the bottom fading out of blue below him. The sand was covered in coral and teeming with life--perfect conditions for sharks. He swam over sharp rocks, careful of the currents that threatened to pull him down and which the seal navigated with unconscious ease. At last he started to hear a hollow booming noise, endlessly repeated. There was a fine white mist of bubbles in the water, which surged back and forth now as if stirred by a giant paddle.

"What is that?"

"Shore," the seal said dispassionately. "You stay close now, funny fish. Many hungry ones be here. You stay, wait by rocks. I come back, bring help, okay?"

"Sure," he said hesitantly, taking up a position at the foot of a giant column of cracked black basalt. The water was too disturbed for sonar to work or eyes to make out much detail, and every second the oddly alternating current tried to wash him back onto the sharp stone and then out into the open waters. He saw a surprisingly large reef shark float slowly past a few lengths away, and stifled a whistle of alarm. The rushing and booming reverberated in his ears. Shore? What sort of shore could make that noise?

Ecco glanced around quickly, saw no sharks, and fluked to the surface before he could change his mind. Struggling against the washing current, he poked his head out of the water... and gasped in air in amazement.

It was shore all right, but what a shore. Towering cliffs of basalt, sheer and craggy, reached up high into the sky. There was no beach, just rocks sharp enough to impale a careless dolphin. Hundreds and thousands of white gulls wheeled in the sky above, calling to each other with their coarse sea-hardened voices.

The rocks were covered with seals, great fat beasts lounging on the volcanic basalt with no care for the sharpness of their chosen perches. In some places they even lay on top of each other in a lazy layer two or three bodies deep. Their thick, oily fur stood up and ruffled in the wind as they dried themselves. The honking, growling, barking and yelping of the seal colony was incredibly loud, now that it was no longer drowned out by the sound of the tide. A fine mist of spray hung in the air, making it humid enough to feel as if he were trying to breathe in water. Waves crashed onto the rocks and water fountained up ten, twenty feet into the air every time the sea impacted with the land. A hollow boom echoed out every time the water hit the rocks, and it was followed by a sucking rush as the liquid flowed down and back through hundreds of holes. Ecco had never seen anything so marvelous in his life.

"Hey, crazy fish!" came a voice from his shoulder. "Pay attention down below! You want to be getting eaten before you see Greshruk?"

The seal was back, and this time it had brought a friend. The newcomer was much larger, and he had a coat that was surprisingly light in color--almost white. "Kachik," Quiahuit said, jerking his head towards the other seal. "Spends much time nearly getting killed with Greshruk, does he. Knows all about the Slayer. He look after you from now, okay?" Without waiting for an answer, the dark-furred seal sped off, leaving Ecco alone with the white one.

He let out bubbles, preparing himself. "You--you know of Greshruk the Slayer?" he asked.

The seal nodded. "I see the Slayer most every day. So you want to meet Greshruk, ha?" His accent was better than Quiahuit's, but the look in his eye was uncomfortably intelligent. "Why?"

Ecco sighed heavily, and started on his long story once again. Kachik waited silently for him to finish, nodding every now and again as if to encourage him to go on. When he had finished, the white seal nodded again, sharply.

"I see. Well, I have never spoken to the Slayer, but I know a place..." The seal grinned at him, bearing sharp fish-catching canines. "You can wait there to see Greshruk come past. But I never draw attention to myself--is too little air down there, you see, no other way out. Have to wait 'til the Slayer's back is turned, then run for it. You catch me?"

"I think so," Ecco answered, a little baffled by the seal's landbound patois. "So I can wait there safely, and then speak to Greshruk?"

"Ha," Kachik said. "Safely--that I don't know. But yes, I think you will have time enough to speak to Greshruk. Come now, take air and I will lead you to the place."

They proceeded along the coast for a while, the seal navigating easily through the maze of currents and riptides. Ecco followed cautiously, wary of the rocks on one side and his unprotected flank facing the open on the other. Seals dashed by around them, casting curious looks back at the white seal with his delphine companion. Kachik took him on a course parallel to the shore, until they suddenly rounded a little point and found themselves in a sheltered inlet. The seal dived, and Ecco followed him.

It was surprisingly deep here. The rocky surface was riddled with cracks and holes; Kachik headed straight for one of them, a slender gap in the basalt stone. The seal slipped through with ease; Ecco wasn't so sure. It looked like a very small crack, and he was afraid he might get stuck. Kachik hissed at him to hurry up, and Ecco capitulated and surged forward, drawing his flippers in. He managed to get through, though he scraped his sides and bashed his tail quite painfully. Sonar told him he was in a narrow cave, and it went back for a very long way. The seal rose and took a breath from the top of the crack where they could just reach air, and then turned towards Ecco, who had manipulated his long body with difficulty so that he was facing back out into the lagoon.

"Ready, bold one?" the seal asked with another fanged grin. "Wait here now, and be patient. Greshruk will come--comes every day to hunt us, does the Slayer. Is safe enough here as anywhere when Greshruk is about. You wait, you see." And with that, Kachik swept out of the crack and was gone like a ghost into the hot blue water.

Ecco settled down to wait.

It seemed to take a very long time. Occasionally a seal flashed by his hiding place, barely giving the cleft another glance. Shoals of silvery fish glittered in the light, and reminded Ecco of how hungry he was--he let out a whistle of irritation, loath to leave his hiding place in case the mysterious Greshruk came by.

He was on the point of giving up when he noticed a strange stillness starting to creep over the water. Ecco tensed up, thoughts of Foe dashing to the forefront of his mind. But there was no shrieking in the water... just a strange, almost reverent silence. Faintly he heard the crash-boom of the water along the basalt coast. The fish seemed to have gone into hiding, and there was not a seal in sight. Everything was still, tense... waiting.

Greshruk the Slayer appeared, gliding out of the deep blue of the open water on outstretched pectoral fins, serene in the knowledge of ultimate power.

Ecco nearly inhaled water. The Slayer... was a shark. A shark like he had never seen before, but whose outline he knew instinctively, as did all dolphins. The white pointer, the biggest predatory fish in the world--the great white--the white death. A fat, mackerel-shaped body; two dark, flat eyes; a mouthful of triangular teeth, bristling like a pufferfish's skin. Ordinary sharks of this type would be white only on the underside and a flat, dead, slate-gray on top, but Greshruk's body was pale all over, as if age had rubbed off the color. Over forty feet long, impossibly huge, the great white cruised majestically through the water, heavy head swinging slowly in tune with the massive, scythe-like tail.

A thrill of terrible fear went up in him. The Foe were one thing, but this shark had been the enemy of dolphinkind ever since the dawn of time. Greshruk could have been the child of Carcharodon himself. How could a fish be that huge?

It took every effort for him to clear his head and speak--his skin was tingling with terror and his heart was pumping far too fast--but he managed to call out softly. "Gr-Greshruk?"

The shark's head swung lazily in his direction, and a spark kindled in the empty eye. The Crushing Dark was in that iron gaze, cold and black and merciless. Slowly, deliberately, Greshruk turned and cruised towards his cleft, jaws working with a lazy grace. Ecco shrank back desperately as the giant shark came straight for him. Turning at the last moment, Greshruk slid right past his hiding place--it took fully five seconds for the entirety of that massive body to pass by--and circled. The black eye drilled into the cleft, searching for him.

"Who calls?" came a languid voice, sultry, dark and charged with lazy power.

Female! Syuuii, this monster is a girl!

Ecco wanted to surface for air, but he didn't dare even though the rock protected him from Greshruk's gigantic snout. He didn't want to do anything under that eye. It sent shocks through him every time it passed over him, and though he knew Greshruk couldn't possibly see him in the darkness of the cleft, the gaze seemed to linger horribly--hungrily. In that one moment he understood why Castor had been loath to advise him about Greshruk, and why Quiahuit and Kachik had laughed at his request.

He was face-to-face with the mother of all sharks, and there was no way out. 


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Greshruk circled twice, lazily, biding her time. The second time, the great pectoral fin with its black-tipped point actually brushed across the rock face where Ecco lay hidden, dislodging several small pebbles. Half-fascinated by the shark, he watched her jaws working, carrying their burden of serrated triangular teeth.

"Ahh..." The Slayer sighed, a slow, cruel sound with a hint of a chuckle in it. "Now I smell you, little mammal. Yesss... I smell your hot body in the water. I know you." She circled, slowly, with infinite patience. "Tell me... who is it that is so bold as to call me by my name?"

Ecco gulped, his quest nearly going out of his head. "I--I'm Ecco."

"Ecco..." Greshruk chuckled to herself, the sound of rocks tearing and breaking free somewhere deep in the Crushing Dark. "Ecco. A well-enough name for a sprat like yourself. Well... Ecco... why did you call me? I am intrigued..."

Keep her interested, a voice screamed in his head, and you may still have a chance to get out of this alive. "Please..." he said nervously, unsure how exactly to address the shark, "I, er... I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask..." Greshruk drew the word out; he could hear it hissing between her teeth. She slowed, cruising round on her wide circle in front of his prison, barely moving her tail. Every time she passed, he felt the displaced water push him back in the cleft.

"I--I wanted to know--please--about T-t--" He stuttered on the word, and let out a whistle, annoyed at himself. "Tidesinger," he finished desperately. "The legend--I--I heard you might know something about him, or--or the Foe--" He hated the way his voice was coming out, scared and sniveling as if he were a calf, but he was having trouble speaking at all in front of the Slayer. She carried an aura of fear with her, as carelessly as a leaping dolphin would carry sunlight on his back.

Greshruk's flat black eye rolled backwards in his direction as she passed by again. With a sudden flash of power that was all the more shocking for being so understated, the shark pumped her tail and swung off on a wider circle, turning it into a figure-of-eight--flaunting her strength before him. "So... Tidesinger. Well, that is a name I have not heard in a long time... so, so..." She chuckled again, meat tearing in a blood-red sea. "You did not come here to ask me of a delphine legend, little mammal... why sacrifice yourself for that which any noisy singer could have told you?" The shark's eye gleamed with ancient cunning. "No, you come to ask me of something else. You want to ask me about the Foe."

Ecco jerked.

"Of course, little mammal... I know the Foe." Greshruk swung round and came back through the circle; she swam steadily towards him with jaws open, allowing him to see past the knife-edge teeth and into the pale cavern of the throat--not a sight many dolphins had seen and lived after. Ecco could not help letting out a little squeak of terror. At the last moment, the shark swung away and resumed her circling, gliding over the reef in front of him. "Yes," Greshruk purred softly, half to herself. "I was there, then, when the waters ran red with blood. Those were fine days, but too few... I was but a youngling, and for me there were rich pickings after the Foe had departed. Alas, I am too great and old now to scavenge." Her eye flashed. "But they were fine days, all the same. And now the Foe has returned."

"Yes," Ecco said quietly, recovering a little of his lost poise. "Castor--a whale I met, said that you might know how the Foe could be defeated. Tidesinger drove them out before. Please, could you tell me what I need to do?"

"Why bother?" Greshruk purred. "In a little while you will never have to worry about the Foe again."

"Wh-what?" He stared at her; she swam towards him and then swung away again, her dark eyes flashing with amusement behind the saw-edged grin. The threat of the gesture was as obvious as a belly-up sturgeon. With a lurch Ecco understood what the Slayer meant by that. "Then," he said bravely, "you won't have anything to lose by telling me."

"Clever little mammal..." Greshruk laughed again, throatily. "Well... since you put it that way... what do you wish to know about the Foe?"

"How to fight them," Ecco answered promptly.

The Slayer paused in her endless circling, gazing at him with a dark, hungry expression. "Nothing could be easier, little mammal. The blind white charge, the swift punch with the snout, the crushing of the body in your jaws... what a shame that you are not a shark."

"Tidesinger did it," he pushed. "Please, you must have heard it at the time. What happened? How did he defeat the Foe?"

"What does it matter to you, air-breather? You won't be alive long enough to see one."

"I've already seen them." Grimly he noted the slight increase in the Slayer's speed, the way her gills worked a little faster. "In fact, I escaped them twice--once with the help of a sperm whale," he admitted modestly. "They took my family, that's why I'm after them. Please, Slayer, tell me how I can fight them!"

"Hah." Greshruk swerved and began to circle again; she bore down on his hiding place with jaws agape, and then slid off at a tangent to circle round and do it all again. The longer tailstrokes she was making betrayed her impatience--she wanted to eat him and get it over with. Patience, Ecco thought, you're losing her. "Why should I tell you?" the Slayer asked simply. "Why would I have any wish to help mammals? Your family" -she said that with a sneer- "is none of my business."

"I know, but..." He had a sudden brainwave. "If the Foe triumph this time, there won't be anything left, Greshruk. That means no food. You'll starve." The only thing sharks fear is starvation. Corse had told him that, trying to impress on a younger Ecco the need to stay within the safety of the bay. "It's in your interests to stop the Foe as much as it is in mine."

Greshruk's jaws worked slowly. "It's true what they say about your kind," the Slayer growled slowly, "you are clever little pests. I never bothered to speak to one of you before. I am impressed--for that I will make your end a swift one once you finally quit your eelhole." She swung round and came back for another pass; he remembered that the great white sharks had to keep swimming all the time, in order to breathe. They were the ultimate eating machines--they never rested. "But you are a fool if you think I can tell you how to destroy the Foe," Greshruk went on. "What do I know of songs and stories?" The corners of her mouth wrinkled into the shark equivalent of a pleased expression--it was the grin she would wear before the charge and the bite.

"My people, little mammal--the descendants of Carcharodon the Mighty--we do not sing amongst ourselves. We do not tell stories. We do not cluster in groups for protection, with the exception of the silly hammerheads. We are a law unto ourselves. We need no lore, no seers or mystics. We simply exist.

"Yes, I know how your ancestor destroyed the Foe. He had songs of power, magical spells. There was something mystic in Tidesinger, some ancient power long since lost. I remember that my father, Carcharodon the Mighty, once ripped Tidesinger's silver hide with his teeth, but the singer survived and was the only one ever to come alive from Carcharodon's jaws." Greshruk eyed Ecco balefully. "Do not think that you will be so lucky."

"Songs of power..." Ecco frowned. "You don't know any of them?"

Greshruk laughed coldly. "Do you think that I have a singing voice, you foolish little creature? No, ask me not of songs. I could teach you much of biting, though..." Her greedy eye fell on him again, and he shuddered. "I could bite right through your slender little body. You would break in my jaws like a brittle-star."

"Then I'll have to make sure that doesn't happen," Ecco retorted, feeling a little of that warrior-fire start up in his belly. "You can't get me anyway, while I'm in here. And I've got air, so don't think you can drown me out!"

The Slayer swung towards him with terrible jaws wide open. This time, however, Greshruk did not stop but slammed snout-first into the rocky wall right above him. A cascade of sand and pebbles showered down, and Ecco felt the stone creak around him with the force of the impact. He squealed in alarm.

Swinging away again as if nothing had happened, Greshruk resumed her calm circling. Her left nostril had been torn from the crash, and a thin thread of blood trailed back from her pointed snout to peter out by her gills.

"Make no mistake, little one. I shall have you sooner or later. You will die in my jaws, like hundreds before you. I do not give up easily."

"Neither--neither do I," Ecco stuttered. His protective prison was still holding, but he knew he had better not make her any angrier or she might well decide to simply starve him out. He backfinned a little, away from the steadily circling Slayer. "Where could I find someone who might know of these ancient songs?"

"You can't," Greshruk answered, sounding coldly pleased. "The lore was lost long ago. I have not heard the songs in thousands of years."

"Thousands?"

"But of course," she said carelessly. "My people do not die of old age, little mammal, and once we attain a certain size there is nothing that can kill us... save perhaps another one of us. And we are merciless towards the weak. I am the Slayer, the oldest living. My father Carcharodon survived the blow-that-broke-the-world."

"Blow-that--? Ecco blinked. He was out of his depth.

Greshruk chuckled again. "Yesss... if you by some miraculous chance should escape my jaws, ask a horseshoe crab about it. My people have lived on in our ancient manner through events that wiped out nearly every other species on the planet. You and your so-wise whales are children compared to us. But enough of this--you ask where to find the songs of power."

"Yes. Do you know where to find them?"

"There is a ruined city of Man," the Slayer said dreamily, "hidden away within the waters of our ocean. In that place Tidesinger was born, and lived. You will find what you seek within Atlantis, or nowhere at all. There, I have said my piece."

"Atlantis?" Ecco had never heard the name before. "Okay... then, where can I find Atlantis?"

Now Greshruk really laughed, opening her terrible jaws wide and thrashing her sickle tail in cruel joy. "You can't, little mammal, and I mean it this time. Atlantis was locked away from our waters when the ocean floor burst asunder ten thousand years ago. If it still stands." The Slayer paused, looking at him out of her empty eye. "Nobody save the Asterite knows where it lies, and the Asterite is long lost. Deep under the sea bed, in all likelihood. So I stand by my words--you will find what you seek in Atlantis, or nowhere at all.

"Now, young Ecco, it is time for you to die. So come out of your hole before I decide to dig you out, and I will make your end a swift and merciful one."

She had been playing with him, Ecco realized. Syuuii! The Slayer had never meant to tell him anything useful--this had been part of some sort of game to her, raising his hopes only to dash them again. Perhaps she wanted to feed off his pain, or make him angry enough to dart out of his sanctuary and try to take her on. He stared out at the white monster, and felt his fury grow into something white-hot and holy.

"Dig me out?" he shouted, his shrill voice shivering through the water. Greshruk's blunt spear of a head turned swiftly in his direction, the jaws opening slightly in anticipation. "I suppose you would at that, you great stupid fish! Well, I'm not going to make it easy for you! I faced down the Foe by myself--I'm not going to be afraid of something like you! Dig me out? Come on and try, you fat old root-feeder!"

Greshruk roared--he heard it. The shark turned like a lightning bolt and came arrowing towards him; he saw the black eyes roll right back into the head as the mouth opened wide, the upper jaw coming forward to extend the triangular teeth. The slam of displaced water as the great white hit the rock face half-stunned him. Stone rained down upon him, as did clouds of dust from above. Ecco heard the stone creak again. Greshruk backed off, but only for a moment; she came around in a long, swinging arc, tail flailing like a machine, and slammed the stone again--and then again. There was a rending sound from somewhere far above him; Ecco knew that the entire cliff face was about to give way.

Was this how it was going to end? The dolphin's mind raced. Crushed under stone or bitten in two by the giant shark... neither option was one he particularly desired. He turned with difficulty, backfinning further into the cleft as Greshruk came for him again, and sonar-clicked the back of the cave. A passage, very steep and narrow, led down for a long way. The shark hit the rock again, driving her snout into the cleft, widening it. He screamed shrilly as the terrible teeth snapped together only an inch or so from his tail.

"Just... a little... further..." Greshruk was snarling. The stone squealed as the great white drove harder with her tail, forcing her way into the tiny hole, heaving the sides of the cave apart with sheer power.

Ecco rose and drew air he could just reach. If he had wanted to, he would have been able to reach out and touch the snout of the great white; Greshruk's huge body more than half filled the opening now. The jaws snapped and twisted together; the tail lashed about outside, throwing waves of water around.

He realized that he would rather drown slowly than be eaten or crushed fast. Clamping down tight on his precious lungful of air, Ecco backed off and dashed down the tunnel away from the shark. Her hissing voice sounded loud in his ears. "I will have you one day, little mammal! I have your scent in my nostrils! I will have you!" Then sound itself became meaningless as the cliff face fell with the crashing of a cataclysm. Awash in a sea of fury Ecco could only flee further in; pebbles banged upon his back as the entire tunnel threatened to collapse around him. Cracks shot along the tunnel roof above his head, moving faster than he could swim. With a squeal, he swam faster into the lightless depths, click-clicking his way. A dead end ahead--no! An exit!

Ecco flung himself through the opening, nearly getting caught by his dorsal fin; he fought free and was suddenly out into a wide expanse. The crashing and rumbling reached a pitch, and then slowly began to subside. Hardly knowing who he was or where he was going, the stunned dolphin kept swimming as the world shivered and shook. At last, it became silent, or nearly so--save the long creaks from the slowly settling rock.

He turned. The tunnel through which he had come was totally blocked off. Ecco had no idea whether Greshruk had been crushed under tons of rubble or whether she had survived--and to be honest, he didn't care. Sonar was telling him that he was in a large open area--a cave, underground apparently.

The water tasted of sand and muck, but it wasn't fetid. There was air down here somewhere. Beginning to entertain the possibility that he had survived that encounter, Ecco began to swim again, clicking his way through the darkness. He didn't know whether to feel relieved or not--quite possibly if there was no way out, he had exchanged a swift death for a slow one.

He was suddenly very hungry. 


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

At least there were fish down here, Ecco thought morosely as he snapped up one of them. Foul little things, all spines, but they were edible if you didn't mind lightly lacerated jaws.

Greshruk's rage had brought what seemed like half a mountain down into the little inlet. There was no way back; all he could do was explore the caves and search for another way out. So far he had been here for several hours. Here and there he had found air-pockets where more or less pure oxygen had been trapped in the tunnels; they provided breathing places for the tired dolphin. He was more or less getting used to the darkness, as his ability to navigate purely on sonar grew better. All the same it was unpleasant, nosing around in the blackness.

The largest creature he had "seen" so far had been a gurnard, a bottom-feeding fish. It looked as lost as he was as it poked slowly along one of the smaller tunnels. Ecco was getting a feel for the tunnels now, an idea of how they were laid out. He appeared to have wandered into a maze of natural caves which honeycombed the rock beneath the ocean floor--or possibly he was actually below land now, he had no way of knowing. At least there was nothing dangerous down here, or so he hoped.

Currently he was progressing slowly through the tunnel network, moving from air pocket to air pocket in a bid to conserve his air. He had never before been in a position where he couldn't surface should he need it, and his new circumstances necessitated a change in his thinking. You had to go slow, measure your ability to continue, always have a rough idea of how far you could go before you needed to breathe.

Ecco had no idea how long he had been down here, but it seemed to have been a long time so far. The tunnels seemed to lead down all the time, and he had soon lost his bearings in the dark and the twisting passages. He was no longer sure which way exactly was north, and that was a strange feeling.

Talking to Greshruk had been a mistake. He should never have called to the great white; he could have realised what would happen when he attracted her attention! Sharks were sharks, no matter how old they were. Ecco let out air in irritation at himself. He had nobody else to blame--Quiahuit had warned him that the Slayer would not be amenable.

"Still, somebody could have told me what the Slayer was!" he whistled to himself, annoyed.

He was swimming down a long and twisting tunnel that was in places very steep, using his sonar to see his way. It was almost as good as eyes--better at night, and invaluable when finding your way around in murky water. The tunnel unfolded in his mind as if he were seeing it, even its textures rendered lovingly. Ecco swung his head slowly from side to side as he swam, brushing his sonar over the walls like a delicate antenna. He remembered something he had heard from a porpoise once: there were actually dolphin species that were blind. River dolphins, or something like that--they lived in estuaries that were so stirred up with mud and sand that they had actually lost their eyes over the years. There was something faintly revolting to him about that thought--a dolphin, pale and eyeless, nosing along the bottom, disturbing clouds of fine silt with its snout.

Ecco had been doing a lot of thinking while he was swimming down here. There was little else to do, and the constant darkness seemed to make his brain work on overdrive. He swam steadily on down, remembering all sorts of things he had heard in his life, tales of sea-monsters and caves of secret wonders. "Hah," he muttered to himself. Maybe there were secret wonders down here somewhere... nobody ever mentioned those caves being dark.

He stopped dead suddenly. There was something moving up ahead--he could hear the scrabbling. And... Love of Delphinius! Was that a... LIGHT?

A faint reflected glow was coming off the walls ahead, where the passage turned. A shadow flickered there, coming slowly closer. Ecco blinked, trying to accustom his eyes to the new level of light, and then frowned. If he was not much mistaken, the light was actually moving...

"Hello?" he called, and there was a sudden flurry of movement. The light-bearer was swimming swiftly away, taking the light with it; things rapidly grew darker again. Ecco gave chase swiftly. "Wait!" he cried out. "Please! I won't hurt you--I just want the light!"

He rounded a corner and saw it again. There was a glowing thing which had wedged itself tightly into a crack in the rocks; the tunnel opened out here into another submarine cave. Ecco looked around with wonder; from the pale radiance he could see the colors in the stone for the first time. The rocks were coated with glittering substance, all the colors of the reef and more, and the light shone through great crystals of it. Ecco stared around, his eyes widening as he realized: they weren't a natural phenomenon. There were pictures, just visible at the edge of the light.

The dolphin returned his attention to the owner of the light. Whatever the thing was, it seemed afraid of him, and he could see even from the small portion visible that the creature was smaller than he. He swam slowly towards it and stopped two lengths away, trying not to startle it. "Er... hello?" he asked hesitantly.

The creature shrank back into its hole a little more.

"Please, I won't hurt you. I just want to use your light--if that's okay." Ecco sighed a little. "I'm lost down here, and I can't see where I'm going."

There was a pause "You a whale?" the creature asked in a small, suspicious voice.

He laughed. "You think I could fit in here if I was?"

"You sound like one... you're not going to eat me?"

Ecco shook his head. "No way, I promise."

The creature came out of its hole, hesitantly, and looked up at him with eyes the size of dinner-plates. He had to narrow his own eyes to make it out behind the light of its lantern.

It was a fish, or something like--but it was like no fish he had ever seen. The creature had a fat, squat body, and ridiculously small fins; its mouth was filled with spiky teeth that stuck out in all directions. Its body was dotted with small points of light like miniature stars. And, most bizzarely of all, was the main light-giver--a tendril or tentacle sprouted from the fish's forehead, to end in a bulb which hovered in front of its mouth. The bulb was giving off a pale white light which seemed startlingly bright in the darkness of the caves.

Ecco wanted desperately to ask what the creature was, but he didn't want it to think him rude--he could manage on sonar alone, but he much preferred being able to see what he was doing. "Hello," he said, as politely as he could. "I'm Ecco. Erm... do you live here?"

"Not exactly," the fish said, looking at him unhappily. "I'm lost. I sort of wandered in here, and I don't know how to get out. Do you know?"

"Sorry," he sighed. "What's your name?"

"Chang. I'm an angler-fish," the fish added. It put an odd little upwards stress on the end of that, as if it were asking him a question. Its dinner-plate eyes blinked uncertainly at him, and he realized that despite the size of those orbs, it didn't really have very good eyesight at all. He got a strange and unrelated feeling that it was a girl.

"I've never heard of angler-fish," Ecco admitted, glad simply to have someone to talk to. "I'm a dolphin. --I guess you haven't heard of those, huh?" He whistled in sudden realisation, looking at the glowing lights on the angler-fish's body. "Oh, you're a deep-down dweller, aren't you?"

"I should be," Chang said unhappily. "I've been stuck in here for months maybe... I can't find a way out."

"Well, we want the same thing, anyway..." Ecco looked at the angler-fish with a sudden grin. "Why don't we work together for a little while? I could use your light, and I guess you could probably use the company!"

Chang blinked. "You mean, go around together? Isn't that a little... weird?"

"With two of us, we both stand a better chance of getting out of here..." Ecco curled his tail-flukes in a delphine shrug. "What about it? We can try one of these new tunnels, as soon as I find some air."

"Air?" The angler-fish stared at him with wonder. "What's that?"

Ecco blinked. The culture gap had rarely seemed so wide.

Even Chang had to admit, though, they made much better time together. Ecco managed to persuade the angler-fish to swim up and cast her light on the pictures for him; aided by the pale glow, he was able to examine them. They made no sense to him.

Pictures lined the tunnels here, which seemed strangely regular in places--the rock walls were composed of stone blocks that lay together in a regimental fashion. Ecco had never seen anything quite like it before--he nosed at them, trying to figure out their secret. On the walls were pictures--of dolphins and other sea life, but mainly of one particular dolphin he saw again and again. The beast had a long white body, turning to smoky black along the extremities--the nose, the tail, the fins. It also had a tail that was shaped more like a sickle than anything else he had seen, and the whole thing was strangely elongated. Clear gems studded its body, like stars. This odd stranger was depicted resting on the back of a manta ray, appearing to lead a school of fish, and even giving a ride to what could only have been Man. One picture had particular resonance for Ecco: the white dolphin was shown curled in a deep crack, while outside a great shark circled.

"Why are you so interested?" Chang asked, irritated. "They're nothing special, they're all over the place down here. They get boring after a while."

"I guess..." Ecco said doubtfully, swimming down the tunnel a little further. "Hey, what about this one?" The white dolphin was in a kind of hall, lined with pillars, and appeared to be speaking--or attacking--something strange composed of twisting lines of spheres.

"Come on, Ecco!" the angler-fish begged. "Let's just see what's at the end, okay?"

"Okay," Ecco sighed, tearing his attention away. He followed Chang along the passage and managed to keep his eyes off the pictures for fully two more lengths, before he caught sight of something which made him stop dead. "Chang! Come here, quick!"

"Now what?" the angler-fish muttered, swimming back with her stubby tail vibrating like a motor.

The white dolphin was facing two creatures. Even painted on the wall, they were horribly familiar to Ecco. Foe. The white dolphin's slender body was curled, preparing to charge; one of the Foe hung back, limbs spread wide, while the other charged. He could see the jaws that had been lovingly rendered, the teeth glimmering white, and he shuddered.

"They're funny things," Chang remarked. "Looks a bit like a kraken... or maybe a gulper."

"I've seen them before," Ecco said darkly. "They're terrible monsters. Think of whatever's the most frightening thing in the sea, and then double that. That's how bad they are."

"Worse than a gulper?" The angler-fish stared at the picture. "Wow."

Ecco turned to move on, and then nearly inhaled water again as he saw the next picture. The white dolphin again, with its head poking out of the water. Above it was a night sky, in which hung a gigantic silver moon; Chang's light gleamed off the reflective surface. Cascades of what seemed like water were pouring down from the moon into the water; the dolphin seemed to be prepared to swim up the cataract. Singing down the moon... Tidesinger! These pictures told the story of Tidesinger!

"You said there are more of these?" he asked the angler-fish.

"Sure." Chang cocked her head to one side. "Like I said. They're all over the place. Half the tunnels are covered with them. Why?"

"I can't explain right now, but this could turn out to be really important..." Ecco realised he needed air. "Come on. We'd better get going--"

"What?" Chang looked at him in puzzlement. "What's up with you?" He had stopped dead.

"Ssh!" he hissed frantically.

He could hear it. Clear as a bell. A faint, high, alien screeching, somewhere within the tunnels themselves. The confused acoustics meant he couldn't tell whether the noise was coming from ahead or behind, but it was there... The Foe! "Chang?" Ecco said softly. The angler-fish looked up at him, blinking her dinner-plate eyes. "I don't know if you can hear, but... Those things in the picture... they're in here with us."

"What? We have to get out of here!"

"I know! Keep calm!"

"Worse than a gulper and you want me to keep calm?"

"Swim," he said coldly, and started to follow his own advice, moving slowly along the tunnel. Chang kept by him, whimpering softly to herself. Ecco already knew the angler-fish wasn't a particularly fast swimmer; he cursed inwardly. If they were to meet the Foe, he would have to make a tough decision... flee, or try and save his small companion.

The tunnel ended just ahead. Ecco and Chang swam out together, and he rose up to collect air from the pocket above. Diving again, he listened hard. The screeching was louder, and it had a pleased sound to it. They've picked up my trail, he thought grimly. They must be able to smell me, like a shark would smell bloodtrail. He cast about, trying to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. There... the Foe were somewhere back the way they had come. Ecco envisioned the monsters coming for him, flying through the tunnels like terrible ghosts... screeching as they closed in. He trembled.

"Ecco?" Chang was nudging him. "Ecco, what are we going to do?"

He glanced down at the smaller fish. "They're after me, but they'll take you too when they find you--there's nowhere you can hide from them." There was an opening in the floor of this particular cavern, leading down still further. It was the only way to go. Ecco looked towards the tunnel from whence they had come, hearing the tone of jubilation in the voices of the approaching Foe. They knew...

"Chang, do you trust me?"

"What?" She stared at him.

"Do you trust me?" Ecco asked insistently.

"I--I--yes, I trust you. Why--?"

He lunged at her. She tried to get away, but his jaws clamped down on her plump body. Holding the struggling, squealing angler-fish as best as he could, Ecco hissed, "Stay calm! I'm going to get us away!"

Dark shapes appeared at the far end of the tunnel. The Foe's screeching reached fever pitch as they saw Ecco with the angler-fish and screamed towards him. He wasted no more time: tightening his grip on Chang, who appeared to have gone limp with shock, he flung up his tail and dived down into the hole in the floor.

The Foe came after him, but the new-found toughness in his muscles allowed him to keep ahead of them and even gain a little. All that exercise had come in useful... Chang's light saved him from having to use his sonar, which would have wasted time. He dashed from hole to hole, tunnel to tunnel--each time when he came out into a larger cavern making a split-second decision which way to go. He didn't allow himself to even consider the possibility that he would run into a dead end. How many are behind me? He couldn't tell--from the screeching, maybe half a dozen. Tidesinger, help me!

Octupi and strange, transparent things scuttled out of his way as Ecco came charging down the shaft. He was going straight down now, he knew--the water pressure was tough, but he could bear it, he'd been acclimatising slowly as he explored the deeper tunnels.

Something snapped at his tail, and he forced more speed out of himself, drawing away from them again. The bottom of the shaft was fast approaching, and Ecco stifled a squeak of rage and fear when he couldn't see another passage for a moment. Then Chang's light fell on a low tunnel which had been obscured by an overhang, and he swept towards it without a second thought. The Foe were only a few lengths behind him as he dashed into the new, horizontal passage. Bright pictures lined the walls and ornate stonework gleamed in Chang's light, but Ecco had no time to glance either left or right. He almost flew through the low passage, scraping his dorsal fin on the roof, and shot out into another cavern--a much larger one, from which there was no exit. There was something in here, but Ecco didn't have time to take it in. Releasing a stunned Chang from his jaws, he turned with a snarl of rage to face down the Foe--to battle at long last.

There was a great heap of loose rock just above the tunnel entrance, held up only by thin supporting slabs. An idea hit him like a thunderbolt. Thanks, Greshruk!

He flung himself forward, ramming his body into the wall of the cavern with as much strength as he could muster. It knocked much of the air out of him, but he didn't care--with a slow crashing noise, the rocks fell and blocked the entrance. One of the Foe made it out, but was crushed beneath the tons of masonry; the others were blocked back in the tunnel, behind several square feet of solid stone. Their enraged shrieks became muffled.

Ecco allowed himself to relax for a moment, hanging in the still water as if dead, and then he turned to see why Chang's light seemed to have gotten so much brighter all of a sudden, and was flickering so much. The angler-fish was swimming shakily about, blinking in a shocked, owlish fashion and bleeding slightly where his teeth had grazed her skin. But she wasn't the main light source any more.

There was something else. He whistled, remembering the pictures he had seen. Tidesinger, speaking to the strange jewelled sphere-strands. The thing from the picture was right in front of him. From floor to ceiling of the great cavern, two--no, three, four even--long chains of balls hung, forming a slowly shifting spiral as they twisted around each other. It was these spheres that gave off the light; they shone with pearly hues, all the colors in the rainbow.

"Chang?" Ecco asked softly.

The angler-fish turned towards him. "Is--is it alive?" she whispered. There was no doubt as to what she referred to.

A voice sounded through the cavern, but it was not Ecco's.

Yes, little one. The spheres glittered, pulsating with light. We are indeed alive. Although it has been long since we have known it. You have woken us from our long slumber.

Ecco gulped. "Who are you?" he asked tremulously. Chang's eyes were filled with wonder as she stared at the spheres.

The answer came, sending a shiver of shock and wonder through the awestruck dolphin.

We... are the Asterite. 


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

"The Asterite!"

Ecco stared in shock and wonder. "You're the Asterite? Greshruk told me about you--!"

Greshruk the Slayer? She still lives? The Asterite's voice was interested. And she spoke to you, little one... We wonder what she saw in you. Certainly there is something about you...

"Who's Greshruk?" asked a very puzzled Chang. They both ignored her.

Ecco swam forward, trying to ignore the growing call to breathe that was bothering him. "Asterite," he said, "I need your help. I really do."

You have come to us, just as Tidesinger did so long ago, for help against the Foe.

"Yes," he said softly. "The Foe are back, Asterite, and they took my pod. Please... tell me what you know. Do you--do you know if the Foe have killed my family? The hermit crab didn't seem to think so--do you know what happened to them? Where were they taken?" He shuddered to a halt, realizing that he was making little sense. Lack of air was starting to make him light-headed--he hadn't breathed once during that long chase, and had used up a lot of the oxygen in his blood. Plus, he had lost much of his remaining air when he had caused the rockfall. Unable to help himself, he glanced down. One of the limbs of the lead Foe was reaching out from beneath the stone; it waved gently in the current, fingers curled in death. The acrid taste of its blood was in the water. He could hear the others screeching in the tunnel, scrabbling at the stone.

Ecco shook himself, trying to think. The lack of air was making it hard.

Come forward, child. The Asterite's voice was kind. Touch the spheres and we shall restore your breath.

Slowly, casting many glances back at the stone, he cruised forward and gingerly stretched his snout out, lightly touching the nearest sphere. The burning in his blood disappeared. Ecco blinked, realising he no longer needed to breathe--he felt as if he had just taken a long breath. "Thank you," he stuttered. Chang looked on in amazement.

Now... your questions. The hermit crab was correct, little one--the Foe have not yet killed your family. They have taken the dolphins with them to provide food for their nestlings.

"Nestlings?" he asked.

The Asterite's light flashed brightly, as if it were nodding in its own way. Let us tell you about the Foe, little one. They came here long ago, from another star. They are parasites. The Foe absorb the life of any organism with which they come into contact; they can strip bare whole continents. Their own home world was overrun by them long ago, and now it is nothing more than a barren rock. The Foe are intelligent; they built vessels that could carry them through the void. Many of their young they sent off through the sea of stars, to seek new worlds upon which to feed.

One day, many years ago, they found our world--the Earth. Such riches as this world possessed were greatly attractive to the Foe. They sent down a ship with a Foe breeder within it, and it landed in the sea. The adult Foe knew that their children, when they hatched, would multiply to infinity in a very short time. The Earth provided the perfect nursery for these hatchlings, possessing the amount of food which it did.

The Foe turned the waters red, and they preyed upon the land as well. They caused a great dying. In those days there were many other forms of life besides our own--in the waters lived reptiles and strange old fish, creatures that had survived the breaking of the world long before only to fall victim to the Foe. The biggest shark to ever live, Carcharodon Megalodon, the Whale-Eater, became extinct due to the Foe.

"Carcharodon?" Ecco asked. "Greshruk?"

Yes. Greshruk the Slayer is a half-breed--half Great White and half Megalodon. Her children carry some of the genes of Carcharodon, but they will never attain such dreadful power again. The loss of that specie is no loss to your kind, young Ecco, but the loss of other animals, especially upon land, was a terrible blow. Many species of mammals died. The Earth lost much of its biodiversity, and the work of the Foe allowed Man to assume his position as the primary predator on the planet.

"But the Foe were stopped." He blinked, unable to take in all the information at once. "I've heard it over and over again--the Foe were destroyed by a dolphin called Tidesinger." Momentarily he wondered how the Asterite knew his name, but he had bigger things to worry about. The Asterite was spekaing again.

Yes, the Asterite agreed. Tidesinger destroyed the Foe. But it seems some Foe larvae were missed. They buried themselves deep in the sea bed. The storm stirred them up again.

"That's why the Foe are here now..." Ecco nodded slowly. Things were starting to make sense. Tidesinger had defeated the Foe, yes, but he hadn't destroyed them completely. "Asterite, the last time they were here, they destroyed hundreds of creatures. What will happen this time?"

Who knows, the Asterite said sadly. Possibly this time they will be successful. If they take root here, they will soon spread to other worlds, and we will all die. Even we ourselves cannot fight for long against their insatiable hunger.

Ecco wanted to breathe. He touched an outstretched sphere, and felt the need die away once again. His mind was racing, running through all the possibilities. No matter how long he thought it through, everything came back to one thing.

"Asterite," he said softly, making an effort to stay calm, "I'm going to fight the Foe, if you'll tell me how. Tidesinger did it once, so we know it's possible to resist them. What's the secret? Greshruk mentioned a place called Atlantis where I could find out...

We will tell you what we can, swiftly, the Asterite said. But we must hurry. The Foe outside this chamber have not given up on you.

Ecco realised that there were still scratching, scrabbling noises coming through the rockfall. He turned uneasily, listening to the alien shrieking of the Foe voices. They were trying to dig through the stone. "Can they get through?" he asked nervously.

They will eventually. We have a little time yet, we believe.

"Then tell me," he said, "everything you know. How did Tidesinger defeat the Foe the first time? And how can I find Atlantis, or whatever it is I need?"

The Foe are collecting life forms from all over Earth's oceans. They will provide food for the larvae, as we have said. Once they are ready, they will send their larvae up in a ship with the brood mother--and once they are in orbit of the Earth, no power of ours will be able to stop them. They have already begun to build that ship, Ecco. You have less than a moon's cycle if you are to destroy them.

In order to destroy the Foe once and for all, Ecco, you must destroy the brood mother. Without the mother, there will be no new Foe. But in order to get to the brood mother, you must battle your way through all the Foe who have so far been born. They will fight to the death to protect her; she is the future of their species.

A rock from the pile shifted and rolled away. Ecco glanced down nervously, able to hear the Foe's shrieks louder now. They were getting through. The dead one's claw looked sinister in the light.

The Asterite was still speaking. Ecco, the Foe see a power in you. They know that you alone have the ability to stop them. The blood of Tidesinger runs in your veins: we see it by the stars you carry upon your head. The Foe will not rest now until you are dead, or they are. But you cannot fight them yet--you need a secret skill, a song.

When Tidesinger rose from the abyssal plane after defeating the Foe soldiers, the ship had already left the waters and was rising into the sky. Tidesinger sang to the moon, sang a song which has never been heard since, and the moon's light became like water, and he swam up it. He left the Earth behind and swam out into the sea of stars, and there he met the Foe on their own grounds. Tidesinger destroyed the Foe ship, and with it the brood mother.

And that should have been the end of it. But it seems that the Foe left behind an infant mother when they died. We sense her presence. She is still young, and not up to her full strength, but already she is giving birth to many new Foe. Ecco, you swim in Tidesinger's trail. You must find and destroy the brood mother, before it is too late. That is the only thing that will ever end the Foe threat.

"But I can barely manage to escape from the Foe themselves," Ecco said numbly. "How am I supposed to destroy their mother? They're bad enough on their own!"

We know, Ecco--we know. There are songs you can learn which will let you fight the Foe--they have been passed down over the years. The Moonsong is the secret treasure of the humpback whales and, if you come to them as Tidesinger's descendant, they will give it to you--but with luck you will not need to resort to it. The dolphins kept the Battlesong which allowed Tidesinger to stop Foe in their tracks. Seek out the lone-swimmers of Atlantis, and they will teach you all you need.

"Atlantis again! How do I get there? Greshruk said you knew!"

The Asterite seemed to laugh. Come closer, Ecco... look within our coils.

Greatly wondering, he did so. "I don't see anything..."

Look closer. Look up.

There was an opening in the roof of the cavern. Ecco slipped right between the twisting strings of spheres and floated in the center of the Asterite, gazing up. There was a strong upward current here, emanating from another hole in the floor and pulling him towards the hole in the roof. Looking into it, he could see a spark of light there.

"Is that daylight?"

Yes. We guard the route to Atlantis. It lies in an inland lagoon; the lone-swimmers come and go as they please through the gate. You shall find help there, Ecco.

He wriggled out from between the spheres, and looked up at the Asterite with an expression of helpless gratitude. "Asterite... I don't know what to say..."

There was a creaking, cracking sound from the stone. Ecco whirled and saw that the rocks were shaking as something pushed at them from below. He let out a squeal of fright as one of the boulders slipped from the top of the pile and bounced down onto the floor of the Asterite's cave.

They are nearly through. The Asterite's voice was solemn. You must go now, Ecco--hurry. We will cover your escape. Take the little angler with you.

Ecco nodded, and swam forward with Chang at his side. He paused suddenly, the coils only an inch from his noise. "Asterite, wait! I have to swim up on this current?" Castor's words came back to him. "We must be miles deep by now--I can't go up that fast, not even a sperm whale could. And I don't have the breath to go up slow..."

This is known to us. You need not fear, Ecco. We will protect you and the little angler from the change in pressure.

He bowed his head, accepting it at last. "Asterite... I can't thank you enough."

The rocks moved again. A spidery limb appeared from inside a deep crack; it flailed around, pushing other stones out of the way. The hole widened, and the head of the first Foe rose out of it. The muted shrieking suddenly became much louder. Ecco backfinned, Chang at his side--the Asterite's coils parted to let them both through.

Go, quickly! We do not know how long we can hold them back!

"Come on, Chang!" Ecco yelled, turning and diving into the strong hot-water current. It caught him and the little angler-fish and whirled them upwards at incredible speed. The Foe charged out into the Asterite's cavern, at least five or six of them--he saw the dark eyeless head of the first stare through the coils at him, teeth gleaming pale in the jaws, and then the Asterite, and the Foe, were gone. He and Chang were hurtling up through a narrow rocky shaft towards that far-off point of daylight. A warm blue glow surrounded the both of them, the Asterite's power.

There was a hollow explosion from below, and Chang squealed in fright. Almost immediately there came another, and the stones shook. Ecco's eyes widened as he saw great cracks splitting the rock around him. "Oh no!" he exclaimed.

"What's happening?" the angler-fish wailed, but her voice was barely audible over the rumbling thunder of stone. Ecco flailed in the current, trying to get himself oriented the right way up. Everything seemed to be shaking, cracking, breaking apart. The growing circle of daylight above was now joined by an amber glow from below. He and Chang whirled upwards with incredible speed, banging into each other.

The rumbling noise was joined by a roar from below. Looking down, Ecco saw something white below them, rising up the shaft as fast as they were going--it looked like a cloud of some sort.

Chang looked down, following his gaze, and let out a shrill squeal of terror. "Ecco, we have to go faster!"

"What is that?" he yelled back.

"It's an eruption!" The angler-fish stared into his puzzled eyes with an intense expression. "It's too difficult to explain, but sometimes the deep-down cracks and the water comes on fire--if that cloud catches us we'll be dead instantly! I've seen it happen!" Indeed the water was getting hotter by the minute.

Ecco looked up at the circle of daylight far above. It didn't seem to have gotten much bigger--there was just so far to go. "Fancy another lift?" he asked tightly.

"I never thought I'd do this willingly," Chang moaned as she maneuvered her body into a position from where he could get hold of her.

"Let's go," he said, and fastened his jaws around Chang's middle. Holding the angler-fish tightly, Ecco pointed himself so that he was facing upwards, and started to beat his tail, increasing their speed still further. The rocky walls, now riddled with cracks and leaking puffs of steam, flashed past too quickly for them to make out any details. Ecco let out a muffled squeal of pain, feeling the heat on his tail.

Chang could see down the shaft; she squealed in fright. "Faster, Ecco, faster!" He barely heard her over the backdrop of roaring and the explosions that were now frequent. The blue glow around them was flickering now, about to leave them. With a sudden surge of power, it burned blue, and then went right out. Ecco realised he needed air.

Daylight was approaching--the circle was getting larger fast. Ecco drew in his fins and swam as fast as he could, turning his slender body into a torpedo; Chang was causing drag, and he had to work harder to overcome it. Not far now... the walls were illuminated now not just by the pale light of Chang's lantern, but by reflected daylight. Now that the Asterite was no longer protecting them, Ecco was feeling the effects of the sudden change in pressure--they had still been two hundred feet or so down when the power went out all the way.

The walls were starting to shake themselves apart. Grimly Ecco worked faster, knowing that if they didn't get out in time they'd be buried in stone as well as cooked alive.

"You did it!" Chang squealed. Light hit them like a blow as they shot out of the end of the shaft--the blue of shallow water flashed briefly in Ecco's eyes, and then, they hit the water's surface and kept going, flung upwards by the current and their blistering speed. Ecco let go of Chang in shock, finding himself catapulted right into the air. Only a second later, an immense geyser of bubbling white exploded from the hole behind them. He went up nearly a hundred feet more before gravity finally caught up with him. The sun hung before his snout, huge, majestic and white-hot; he turned over in the air and was facing down towards the water that glittered in the daylight. For a long moment he seemed to hang suspended in the air.

They had come out in a shallow tropical lagoon, enclosed on three sides by land and on the fourth by rocky cliffs that ended in what looked like Man-made stone doors, incredibly huge. The faint pearly gleam of buildings was visible under the surface of the water. From this altitude, Ecco could see that the city was arranged in an odd circular formation, with clear pathways leading through the walls to a kind of hub.

The geyser had died down; he could see where it had been from the great circular wash on the water. He couldn't see Chang anywhere.

Ecco realised that he was now falling, very fast. He nearly panicked then, but had the self-control to draw in his fins and orient himself nose-first--just as if he had merely jumped very high. The water hurtled up to meet him, and he hit it with a crash. Throwing out his fins, he just managed to change direction in order to avoid hitting the bottom nose-first, and then he just hung half-stunned in the water that was bright enough to hurt his eyes. There was a loud splash and Chang entered the water only a few feet away, in a cloud of bubbles.

We're here, Ecco thought numbly. This place--it just has to be Atlantis. Now I can find the lone-swimmers...

He rose and caught breath, then dived again, keeping an eye out for any other dolphins; he spotted Chang below him, disoriented and swimming shakily in circles. Ecco cruised down towards the first of the buildings, calling out--but nothing answered him. And there was something wrong here... something strange...

"Oh, Asterite!" Ecco wailed.

The Asterite's information had obviously been out-of-date... by a very long way, if this was any judge. Atlantis was a city, yes, but a city long in ruins. There were no dolphins here, no nothing. The white buildings were in a shocking state of disrepair; most were only rubble and the faint outlines of walls. Everything was overgrown with weeds. 


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

The shaft from whence they had come was completely blocked up--the stone had collapsed in upon itself. Where there had been a giant eruption of white water, now there was just a large, shallow depression. Puffs of steam leaked occasionally from great cracks in the stone.

Ecco nosed around on the surface of the depression, but drew back with a squeal as a jet of steam seared his nose. Shaking his head to clear the pain, he turned and looked at the stubby shape of Chang, hovering beside him. "The Asterite--" he began.

She shook her head, looking at him with big, sad eyes. "I don't think so," the angler-fish said unhappily. "Nothing could have lived through that. I've seen eruptions before."

"What are they?" he asked curiously. "I mean, all hell broke loose down there..."

Chang stared down at the blocked shaft before she spoke. "I know this might sound strange to you, Ecco, but in the deep-down the ground is alive. Sometimes it cracks open and bleeds--its blood glows. It's usually cold down there, but when the rocks are bleeding the water heats up and turns into that white stuff. It's death to go near when that happens."

"And the Asterite..."

"I think he was right in the center of it," the angler-fish said softly. "Well, at least the monsters are gone now..."

"There'll be more of them," Ecco said grimly. "Come on. There's nothing for us here. Let's look for a way out."

"I thought you wanted to come here?" Chang stared at him. "Isn't this the place where you were going to find help?"

"It might have been, a long time ago!" Ecco growled, making the angler-fish back off nervously. "Look! Look at it!" He whirled, indicating the broken-down city. It seemed sad and forlorn in the bright sunlight. "There's nothing here, Chang--no lone-swimmers, no nothing! Nobody's lived in Atlantis for thousands of years!" He realized he was frightening her, and made an effort to lower his voice and speak more calmly. "We'll just leave," he said slowly, forcing himself under control. "You need to get back home, and I need to go look for the lone-swimmers. If they still exist, they must have a home somewhere. Some bay..." Ecco rose and blew, bad-temperedly. "I'll go and ask the whales or something, if I can get past the Foe."

Chang just looked at him, seeming to want to say something. After a moment she settled for saying simply, "Getting out... that's the first thing."

"What?" Ecco asked.

The angler-fish just kept looking at him--no, looking at something behind him. Ecco turned and saw the great stone doors to the city. They were of a deep blue-green stone that had once been beautifully polished but was now covered with barnacles and weed. He swam over and looked at the faint carvings that still remained--dolphins, whales, all kinds of sea life, rendered in relief. The doors reached up out of the water for almost fifty feet--there would be no jumping over them. Ecco nosed around, but there was not even a crack through which he could escape; the doors were still as flush in their frame as they had been the day they were carved. They were basically locked in.

"Well, this is just the end," he snapped. "What do we do now? Wait until the Foe find another way in?"

"Calm down, Ecco," Chang said gently. "I thought I'd never find a way out of the Undercaves, but you turned up just when I was ready to give up. Something will come along--you'll see."

"Hah," Ecco said bitterly, and turned to swim away.

"Where are you going?"

"I need to think," he growled. "Don't follow me. If I want you, I'll find you."

He knew he was being cruel--he knew that Chang's big, unhappy eyes would be fixed reproachfully on him as he turned tail and swam away from her--but he didn't care. When he had so unexpectedly found the Asterite, he had thought for one glorious moment that everything was about to work out. Then, instead of working out, everything had fallen apart, and now Ecco felt more helpless than ever. All of his leads had dried up--Greshruk had been less than helpful, the Asterite had set him on a trail long dead, and Atlantis was not only a ruin but a prison.

Ecco simply had no idea what to do. Even if he could have found a way out right now, he had not the slightest idea how to find the lone-swimmers. Running across a single lone-swimmer in the vast expanse of the ocean would be well nigh a miracle.

He dived, hardly knowing where he was going, and swam into the sunken city itself. Fish flashed past his snout in a silvery shower, lifting his spirits a little. Ecco sighed, glancing around just out of habit. Nowhere did he see any signs that a dolphin had ever visited this place. They were everywhere on the stone--carved onto the walls, depicted on mosaics on the ground that were barely visible under sand and weeds. But, the only things moving in real life were the fish. There were thousands of them, flowing out of his way in great waves as if they too were part of the water.

Ecco swam faster, along one of the wide avenues that led to the central building. This place seemed more intact than the rest--it still had a roof, and windows. It was a large circular place that had once been quite something, with towers and minarets and great reliefs. He noticed that the images on the walls were similar to those he had seen in the Undercaves, although there were no pictures of Tidesinger here--just other dolphins.

Irritated, Ecco swam right round the main building. He found a hole at the back where some of the stones had crumbed, but he didn't try to force his way inside--he had had enough of enclosed spaces. The dolphin rose to breathe quickly, and then swam down again, taking one of the other roads this time. It was very quiet in Atlantis. He swam faster and faster, as if to outrun unquiet ghosts.

Rounding a corner swiftly, Ecco crashed smack into something coming the other way, and sent it spinning. He let out a squeak of shock; at the same time he heard a grunt from the other. He struggled to right himself in the water; the impact had knocked him half-silly. With a little effort, Ecco managed to change his position so that he was the correct way up, and then he shook his head dizzily and focused on the thing he had hit.

Round, stocky, torpedo-shaped body... slate-gray on top, chalk-white below... It flipped over, shook itself and then started as it saw him too.

Ecco shrieked.

The great white lunged forward, but he was already moving--he turned tail and flew back into the city, dashing along the main street like a bolt of silver lightning. The shark came right behind him, roaring in fury. Unable for the moment even to think, Ecco took turns at random--he could hear the rush of water from the flailing tail as the killer raced after him. Too fast! Left--right--left again--right...

He dived, throwing up his tail, and shot into one of the buildings through a small window. There was a crash of masonry as the shark followed, bringing down the rotted windowframe as its bigger body entered. Ecco paid it no heed, racing onwards through an open doorway and into a long hall ended with two big wooden doors. He had no time to breathe, though he wanted to by now. The shark was only a few lengths behind him--he could hear it coming. The end of the hall was approaching fast. Ecco charged and punched a hole through the rotten and warped wood of the doorway with his snout, finding himself in a long corridor. He dashed down it, searching for an exit, and then realized with a lurch that there was no other way out--it ended in a simple wall of stone. Ecco threw himself against it again and again, but it refused to give.

There was a loud crash from the other end of the corridor, and he turned to see the great white bring down the wooden doors with it. It came towards him at a slightly slower speed now, taking its time. Ecco pressed up against the back wall and watched it come.

It wasn't actually a very big shark. Certainly it was nothing like the size of Greshruk--he hadn't actually been able to see how large it was before, given that he had had his tail to it most of the time. The fish was probably a couple of feet longer than himself, though it must have weighed twice as much--the snout was more slender than Greshruk's had been, and the teeth in the open mouth he saw were long and pointed, not like Greshruk's knife-edged triangles. Those were fish-eating teeth, suggesting along with the more streamlined shape that this was only a young great white which hadn't yet graduated to eating mammals.

Ecco's eyes narrowed. The shark came towards him with some uncertainty, re-evaluating him at the same time as he evaluated it. He could see the gills working nervously; he was a larger opponent than the shark had expected. There was a good chance he could actually dissuade it from attacking him, if he didn't show any fear.

"If you come any closer," he said, trying to sound as fierce as possible, "you'll be sorry."

The shark blinked, looking at him out of surprised dark eyes. For a moment its mouth opened and closed, as if it were trying to think of something to say, but then it seemed to come to a decision. It slowed and just stared at him.

"You're not supposed to talk," it said at last.

Ecco growled. "What, I'm supposed to sit here like a guppy and just let you eat me?"

The shark blinked. "Pretty much," it said hesitantly.

This one was a male, Ecco saw. He judged that the shark was possibly a little younger than he and certainly inexperienced with such large prey, and he drew heart from the fact. "I'm warning you, fish, I won't go down without a fight."

"You attacked me first!" the shark said in an injured tone.

"It was an accident." He let out bubbles, wishing there was air in the corridor--he didn't really want to have to go out past the shark. "Look, we don't have to fight each other. I'll let you alone if you let me alone, how's that?" The shark looked doubtful, and Ecco realized something more impressive was needed. Castor had said that all sharks held one thing in reverence... "I'm not afraid of you," he insisted, his voice gathering strength. "I've faced down Greshruk the Slayer and lived to tell the tale."

That got a reaction. The shark's jaw dropped. "You know the Slayer?"

"She's a close personal friend of mine," Ecco bluffed. It wasn't quite an invention--at least Greshruk had paused to talk to him before she tried to eat him. That was probably the closest any dolphin had ever come to becoming friends with her. "I bet she wouldn't be pleased if you ate me!" That was partly true too--Greshruk had sworn to eat him herself.

There was a pause. The young great white was just staring at him, unable it seemed to make anything of the puzzle facing it.

Ecco whistled in irritation. "You just going to sit there all day?" he asked, sounding as tough-guy as he could. "Get out of the way!"

"Sure..." Casting a long, puzzled look back at him, the shark turned on its own length and swam back out of the corridor. Ecco followed, staying well back and keeping his eyes on the steadily sweeping tail for any sign of turning. They exited into the great hallway through which they had dashed, through the wreckage of the shattered wooden doors.

The shark waited, a respectful distance away--still staring at him. It was frowning slightly, as if trying to winkle something out of its memory. Ecco attempted to skirt around the other side of the hall, keeping as much distance between himself and the confused fish as possible, but suddenly it moved and blocked his exit. He felt his heart crank up two gears. "How do you know the Slayer?" the shark asked suspiciously.

Ecco hesitated, and saw the powerful jaws open slightly as if the shark were readying itself to charge him. He made one of the hardest decisions in his life--he decided to tell the truth to his enemy. "I met her at the Cape of Good Hope," he said with a slightly defiant air. "Go ahead and ask her if you want. Why?"

"She's my mother," the shark said cautiously.

Oh, Delphinius...

"She wouldn't go around talking to dolphins..." The shark stared at him. "The Slayer eats dolphins when she sees them. Heck, she'd eat me if she could get close enough." An idea was wiggling slowly through the fog. "You're lying."

Ecco gulped, seeing the shark's gills starting to work harder. He had seen that in Greshruk, just before she charged him. "Okay, okay," he whistled quickly, "I haven't been a hundred per cent honest. But I swear, I have spoken to Greshruk, just a few days ago! You can ask her yourself if you don't believe me!" There was a pause. "Are you still going to try and eat me?" he asked hesitantly.

The shark slowly shook its head. "Nah..."

He exhaled bubbles.

"It takes all the fun out of it when your prey starts talking back. I'd feel bad about it now." Slowly the big fish moved aside, opening the way out. Very very carefully, Ecco began to swim forward, keeping his eyes rigidly on the shark. It moved again, and he backfinned hurriedly. "But you still hit me," the shark said crossly. "Right in the gills."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going." He looked unhappily into the black eyes. "It was an accident, and that's the plain truth. I was as surprised as you, remember?" Ecco's need for air was becoming critical. "Look," he said at last, "I'm going out. I'm going to trust that you won't try and bite me or anything. I have to find a way out of this lagoon before it's too late."

"Hah, good luck," the shark said bitterly. "I've been looking for days. I got washed in over the gate when the big storm came, and I've been stuck here ever since." It moved aside as he swept past, then followed him out of the hallway and through the small room into the open water. Ecco rose to breathe, very nervous about the big gray shape following him. The shark waited, a couple of lengths away, and then asked curiously, "How did you get in here?"

Ecco sighed, thinking about all the events that had happened. He looked over at the shark, seeing it for the first time as a possible ally rather than an enemy, and he was surprised. The eyes of Greshruk had been empty like the Crushing Dark, full only of hunger and ancient, deadly cunning. This youngster had a different look--his round black eyes were expressive and slightly wistful. There was a hopeful look in them right now, as he waited on his answer. Somehow, Ecco found himself unable to avoid liking the youngster.

He sighed again, introduced himself properly, and started on the long and convoluted narrative of the past few days. He started with Orcus's arrival, went right through everything that had happened regarding the coming of the Foe, and then told the shark everything about his encounter with Greshruk--truthfully. He left nothing out, not even the Slayer's oath to kill him. He had to breathe halfway through, but he finished the tale with a condensed explanation of what the Asterite had told him. "So I thought--I really thought, that I'd find help here. But--well, you can see for yourself what this place is like. I guess we're all done for. Nobody else knows what to do about the Foe."

"So basically you've got to get out," the shark said, and looked miserable. "I wish I could say something to help. I've been looking for a way out ever since I got here, but--no joy."

"What's your name?" Ecco asked after a moment more. "I told you mine..."

"Karkol." Suddenly the big fish grinned rakishly. "Talk about weird, huh? I mean, us, talking?"

"Yeah, we're like arch-enemies or something..." Ecco looked towards the young great white where he cruised comfortably on his right. "There's a bigger enemy right now, Karkol. I don't think even the Slayer could resist the Foe. I mean, I've seen them." He whistled softly to himself. "You're sure there's no way out of Atlantis?"

"Only the doors," Karkol told him confidently. "I spent a lot of time nosing around them, and there's this mechanism or something that I think is supposed to open them--but it's all overgrown. I don't know if it even works any more."

Ecco was impressed. He'd heard that the great white was one of the most intelligent of fish, but that was real high-grade thinking. "Karkol, I want you to show me this mechanism. And we should pick up Chang on the way..." He sideyed the big shark. "Um... you won't eat her, will you?"

"The little angler?" Karkol grinned again. "Nah. She probably wouldn't be anything more than a mouthful, anyway."

"I know you sharks and your mouthfuls," Ecco muttered darkly. The great white gave him a teasing look and swept ahead of him, moving gracefully through the sparkling water on his outstretched pectoral fins. 


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

They found Chang nosing around near the gates, fascinated by the little brightly colored reef fish that ebbed and flowed like the current. The reef-dwellers for their part were fascinated by the angler, and bold ones kept trying to nibble on her lantern--at which point she snapped them up into her mouthful of spiky teeth. Ecco had wondered why she was called an angler-fish.

There was a little difficulty in persuading Chang to accompany them--she took one look at Karkol's "friendly" grin, and fled into the weeds with a thin shriek. Weeding her out was helped by the fact that her glowing lantern tended to give away her position, but it still took a lot of persuading to get the angler-fish to quit the cover of the rocks and come out into the open water. She hovered around behind Ecco, eyeing the great white with unconcealed dread.

"Come off it, Chang," Ecco pleaded. "He's not interested in you, honest."

"Yeah, I'd need to eat ten of you for a good-sized meal," the shark broke in wickedly.

Ecco sighed in resignation as the little angler dashed back into the seagrass. "Karkol, you're not helping..."

At last the unlikely threesome moved off towards the gates, Chang always keeping Ecco between herself and Karkol. Despite Chang's doubts, Ecco was finding a strange affinity between himself and the young great white. Karkol was cheerful and optimistic, and he had perhaps a little too much confidence in his own strength (Ecco thought privately). It was comforting in a way to have those powerful jaws along--he could imagine what they might do to any Foe who dared to show themselves.

"Here," the great white said, rising up through the water. To Ecco's immense surprise, Karkol actually stuck his head right out of the water, blinking myopically in the air. His pointed snout indicated something above them, at the top of the gates.

"Some sort of pulley system..." Ecco murmured thoughtfully, and tailwalked for a few moments to get a better look. Man-things, those were--there was still some lore that told of Man, the builder of Atlantis. Great iron chains were attached to the top of the gates; they ran into holes in the cliff-face above, where rusted iron spars suggested some sort of ancient machine lay within. The chains were slack now, but if they were pulled to somehow, they would lift the gate up in its grooves and allow passage beneath its stone span. Ecco frowned as another problem presented itself. "Karkol, Man was landbound. What if the controls for this gate are up there somewhere?"

"I don't think they are," the great white said, turning towards him. "This whole place, right... apparently it used to be above ground. There was a kind of lake, and the city was in the middle of it. It's all sunk down for some reason." Karkol paused, thinking his words out. "You know that big building in the center? I reckon the controls are in there. There's all sorts of cool stuff, but I couldn't explore it all properly because there's no light inside--you can't see two inches in front of your nose."

"Well, we've got light!" Ecco grinned. "Chang, I think we need your services again!"

"This is all beyond me," the angler-fish remarked to Ecco as they headed back towards the sunken city. "You all rely so much on light up here! Where I come from, we just use it to attract food and stuff." She blinked, looking up at the wavering disc of the sun with wonder in her eyes. "And I didn't realize there was an end to the world! What's up there? Is it some kind of giant angler-fish?"

"The sky," Ecco told her. "There's creatures that actually live there, too. Birds--they swim in air like we swim in water. It's much harder to swim in air, though, which is why we can't do it--we aren't strong enough to hold ourselves up."

"Some fish can do it," Karkol broke in, glancing sideways at them. "There's flying-fish, which sort of glide and flap. Apparently there were sharks who could do it too, ages ago." The great white looked a little sad as he followed Chang's wondering gaze. "Of course, we're limited in what we can do because we can't breathe up there. Ecco'd be fine if he ever learned to fly, but I guess we're stuck down here."

"What do you mean, 'down here'?" Chang asked, half-laughing. "This is up! Very, very up!"

The streets stretched out before them. Karkol led the way to the main building, swimming gracefully down what would once have been Atlantis's main road. Ecco looked around as he followed the great white, trying to imagine the city as it would once have been--before the long slow decay took hold of it.

"Kinda creepy, isn't it?" Karkol asked, reading his thoughts.

"Yeah... a little." Ecco looked up at the great circular building, dark and featureless beneath its covering of weedy slime. "How do we get in?"

"There's a hole round the back." Karkol headed off that way, glancing back to encourage the others to follow him. "I noticed some of the bricks were loose, so I pushed 'em out. I couldn't go far in, though, like I said."

Ecco rose to breathe, then dived to inspect the hole. Chang was there before him; she moved aside to let him pass and then brought up the rear. Her light seemed much brighter in the darkness of the building. Ecco blinked several times, re-acclimatizing himself to the level of light.

They were in a very large room; outside the circle of Chang's light, everything was dim and in shadows. There were dim reflective eyes here and there, from the fish that had found their way inside. Ecco looked around slowly, seeing that the room was filled with shelves upon which were odd rectangular objects. He nosed one, and it separated out into sheets upon which were odd, faded markings. A few more moments and the object drifted slowly apart, becoming rags and wisps. "Oops," Ecco said, slightly embarrassed.

"Don't worry." Karkol slipped between the towering shelves, heading for the back of the great room. "They're all like that. I tried to pick one up before and it just dissolved in my mouth--tasted gross, too. Whatever they are, I don't think they're supposed to be underwater."

"Man-stuff," the dolphin murmured thoughtfully, following the shark through the dimness of the hall. Chang bobbed at his side, her tail vibrating hard. Karkol cruised just outside of the circle's edge, a big gray shadow. His eyes glowed palely with reflected light.

"There's an opening here," the shark informed them, coming back. "I couldn't find it before because it was too dark. It goes deeper in... want to take a look?"

"Sure," Ecco said, after a quick glance at Chang. He didn't need air yet, but the thought remained at the back of his mind. Syuuii! He hated being always dependent on the surface--he'd never thought about it before, the air had only been a few fluke-strokes away, but his adventures in the air-starved Undercaves had made him rethink his own design.

The passage they entered next was a little cramped for the three of them, and Karkol went ahead again, Chang swimming in the middle so that both of them could use her light. Ecco glanced up at the ceiling and saw that there were odd globes set into the brickwork; he swam up and nudged one with his snout and it didn't feel like rock. "Weird..."

"What's that?" Karkol asked, glancing back.

"Nothing." Realizing that Chang was leaving him behind again, Ecco hurried to catch up. They reached the end of the corridor quickly enough, and found another wooden door blocking their way. Karkol took one look and broke it down, swimming on through the gap with wooden splinters cascading down around him.

"He's strong," Chang whispered, impressed. Ecco just nodded, glad that the angler-fish was getting along with the great white.

They entered another, smaller room. To Ecco's relief, there was a trapped bubble of air here; he rose and refilled gratefully, ridding himself of the faint light-headedness that had been stealing over him. That done, he swam back down to where Karkol was circling slowly, and looked around.

The circular room was filled with machinery, all dark and dead. In the center was a great cylindrical device within which something floated; there were levers and buttons all over panels on the bottom. Banks of other controls were dotted around the room. Ecco examined them closely, curious to know what they had once done. His snout brushed over buttons experimentally, but nothing happened--there was just a muffled click from one or two of them. "I think it's broken," the dolphin said finally, a little reluctant to just give up.

"Ecco?" That was Karkol, sounding excited around the other side of the big cylinder. "There's a really big one here, come take a look!"

He had found a lever that was fixed into the ground; it was around two feet long. There was a little zigzag symbol embossed onto the mosaic-tiled floor next to it. Ecco frowned at it, trying to figure out what the picture might mean. After a moment, he carefully took the lever in his mouth and tried to push it. It gave a little, but not much. Ecco struggled with it, thrashing in the water so that Karkol gave him a startled look. "Drat, it's stuck," he said at last, pulling back. "I can't budge it."

"You want me to try?" Karkol asked. Without waiting for an answer, he swam down and nosed at the lever. Ecco backfinned involuntarily as he saw the shark's upper jaw come forward in his mouth, baring the deadly teeth. Karkol's jaws clamped around the lever, teeth screeching on the bare metal; the great white began to surge forward, sweeping his tail back and forth. Ecco and Chang exchanged alarmed looks as there came a loud, metallic groaning noise from somewhere far below them.

"Careful--!" Ecco got out, afraid that Karkol would bring the whole place down on them. The shark ignored them; his eyes had rolled back in his head, as they would do when he charged an opponent, and he was forcing his big body forward through the water. The lever moved suddenly, swinging forward and nearly catapulting the surprised shark into the wall. There was a heavy clunk from below, and the creaking stopped.

Light flickered, suddenly, startlingly bright; they all winced. The cylinder flashed and flickered several times, fizzing loudly. Then it began to shine with a strong, white light. The globes in the ceiling went on one by one, and turning Ecco saw them going on all down the corridor too, reaching out from the center room. Punk. Punk. Punk. A big crystal was suspended in the cylinder--this was glowing white-hot, sending out surges of energy through cables at the top.

"Was that supposed to happen?" Karkol asked through half-shut eyes.

"Looks like it..." Ecco rose to breathe then came back down to have another look at the room, now that it was so brightly lit. Almost at once, he spotted two or three small objects scattered around the base of the big lever. "Hey, Karkol... I think you lost some teeth."

The shark grinned at him, revealing that he still had plenty left. "Don't worry, happens all the time. They just grow back."

Chang was buzzing around the room, looking at everything with avid interest. Ecco followed her example, and whistled loudly as he saw something interesting on the back wall. He swam up and took a good look for himself.

The walls were covered in small stone tiles, as was the floor; now that there was light, the pictures were visible, dolphins and all kinds of sea creatures. The walls looked like a reef in stone, Ecco thought. The Atlanteans, whoever they had been, had certainly liked the sea. He turned away from the beautiful images, though, because something else had caught his eye. One of the walls was covered not in fish but in some sort of diagram; wavy lines curved down over the stone surface, decorated here and there with symbols. Ecco frowned, trying to make it out. The shapes looked somehow familiar...

He whistled again in excitement. This was a diagram of the machinery of Atlantis! Ecco stared hungrily at the symbols, willing them to come clear in his mind. That squiggle must symbolize opening of something... the gates? What was the little zig-zag shape? Karkol was saying something, but he ignored it--he was starting to get the idea--

"ECCO!"

His concentration broke. Angrily he whirled around. "WHAT?"

Karkol's expression was grim. "I've been trying to get your attention. Chang says--that noise--it's the Foe?"

A cold thrill went right through Ecco. He hadn't been listening, had been pouring all his mind into the picture. The screaming of the Foe was clearly audible. "They're inside the complex," Karkol said harshly, looking towards the doorway. There was no other way out, and no way to defend it.

Ecco bit down on his fear, and turned back to look at the picture again. The shark yelled at him in frustrated fury, but he ignored Karkol completely. All the answers were here, if he could only figure it out in time...

"They're coming!" Chang wailed. "We're gonna be eaten alive!"

"Let that be the least of your worries," Karkol muttered. "If we get killed, the Foe win..."

"Nobody's doing any dying yet," Ecco snapped. "Just hang on! I'm almost done!"

"Ecco, we haven't got any time!" Karkol sent a wild glance down the passage and saw the Foe--ten, twelve of them maybe--appear at the other end. They took their time progressing up the tunnel, knowing that their quarry was going nowhere. The shark quailed, understanding instinctively that this enemy was beyond him. "Ecco, do something!"

Ecco didn't take his eyes off the picture. "Can you see a switch near the door?"

"What?"

"A button or something! Press it!"

"This is not the time to start messing around!"

"Please, Karkol, just do it already! It'll close the doors!" He stared at the picture with single-minded concentration. "I think I've figured it out!"

"What switch?" Karkol snarled, staring around. He could see nothing that looked remotely pushable. "Ecco, damn it!"

Suddenly a small shape pushed past him. Chang's little light fell full on something that had been almost fully covered over by sediment. Karkol blinked, looking at the angler-fish in something like amazement. "Here," the angler-fish whispered. "I can sense metal behind it."

"I'll thank you later!" He poked the switch hard with his snout, lifting it up. There was a scrape of stone from above them, and then a clunk. Karkol watched the doorway with fascinated horror. The Foe were nearly halfway up the tunnel now. With agonizing slowness, a heavy stone slab began to judder its way down into grooves that had been carved there. Realizing what was going on, the Foe surged forward, their screeches accelerating to fever pitch. Karkol's last sight was of them searing towards him through the electrically-lighted water... then the stone slab thudded down into place. A moment later something hit it with terrible force. It held, for the moment.

Karkol turned. "Ecco, how we coming along with those gates?"

The dolphin was still looking at the picture on the wall. "I think I've got it! It's all to do with this glowing thing... it's like some sort of central control! We can open the gates from here!" He turned, a worried light in his eyes. "That is, if it still works..." The crystal was flickering slightly, as if some ancient power source was slowly giving out.

"Just tell us what to do," Karkol said tightly. Chang nodded.

Ecco glanced back at the picture once more, and then slowly backed away, turning towards the main console. "I'm going to try and get the machine to open the gates. The Foe won't take too long to get in here. See if you can delay them with something."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Chang asked. Ecco ignored her; he had settled down in front of the console and was frantically lifting switches and pressing buttons with his snout.

Karkol glanced left and right, saw broken steel girders on the floor. He swam down and took hold of the end of one, then started to try and lift or push it forward. It took an immense effort, but it moved slowly, screeching and scraping over the tiled floor. Chang watched, not understanding what he was doing. Grimly the shark forced the girder into place across the doorway, where a long crack had appeared in the stone. He didn't wait--he went back for another. Methodically he piled as much junk as he could in front of the doorway.

Ecco looked up at the picture again to check what he had done, then down at the keys before him. As far as he could tell, the switches were all in the positions that were shown on the walls. There remained only one thing to do... He looked down at the centerpiece of the controls, a big red square. No time like the present... He pushed it down. There was a heavy boom and then an almost unbearably loud clanking noise from somewhere far below them. The crystal flickered wildly.

"The gates?" Karkol asked through a mouthful of metal.

"They should be open..." Ecco squealed suddenly as the crystal flickered right out. With a whine that dropped to a murmur, the lights all went out. The clanking stopped. The three companions were left in the dark again, save for Chang's own little light. The Foe were almost through the stone slab; Karkol heard the tangle of girders beginning to move, pushed back across the floor. The tip of one moved into a dim greenish shaft of moonlight...

Light?

The shark looked up, and his jaw dropped open as another mystery was made clear. There had been great convex glass windows, once upon a time; now it was almost completely overgrown with weeds. There was a faint, diffuse light in here, from where the light of the outside found its way through a thin patch in the cover of green. Karkol grinned as another idea fought its way into his head.

"Follow me!"

There were no Foe outside, which was possibly fortunate for them. They were not, thus, around to witness the sight of a great white shark bursting out of the side of a building of Atlantis, shards of glass falling all around him like stars. Seaweed hung onto Karkol's fins like streamers as he surged up, breaking through into the dark evening water of Atlantis. Ecco and Chang were right behind him. "Go!" the dolphin yelled, then snatched up the angler-fish in his jaws and chased Karkol's retreating tail.

Swarms of Foe erupted from the building right behind them as they dashed off towards the gates, flying over city roofs. The moon was huge in the sky above them, a giant oval--three or four more days would have the silver orb at full. There wasn't much time left, Ecco realized grimly.

He nearly had a heart attack when they reached the gates. They had gone up, yes, and now they were coming down again! The power failure! The giant portals of stone had been slowed in their descent by the chains that should have held them up, and by the weight of water they had to push out of the way, but they were sliding down inexorably towards the deep groove in the ground in which they had stood for so long. "Faster!" Ecco yelled through his mouthful of Chang, passing Karkol by like a silver bolt of lightning.

The shark took a look behind him, and sped up himself. The Foe were coming for them fast--faster than they could swim. This was going to be tight...

They were neck and neck as they shot under the gates. Karkol felt his dorsal fin brush and then scrape against the descending weight of stone--as the larger of the duo he had one moment of heart-stopping terror at the thought of being crushed--and then they were out into the open sea. The gates closed behind them with a thunderous bang, and the reverberations bowled Ecco right over in the water. Chang went flying.

Karkol, being biggest, recovered easiest from the wash of water against his body, and then responded instinctively to a sudden feeling against his side. He turned, whiplike in the water, and his jaws came down on a Foe's outstretched limb. Metallic claws clutched at his head, scoring bloody rents. The shark responded to the sharp pain the only way he knew how--his eyes rolled back, a blood-red mist filled his brain, and his body began to take care of itself.

Ecco and Chang were sensible enough to back off to a safe distance. Two of the Foe had gotten out under the gate before it closed--and they didn't live long. The sight of an angry great white shark was not one a dolphin got to witness often, and now Ecco had seen it twice... He sideyed Chang, both of them considering the same thing.

"Should we leave?" the angler-fish whispered.

Ecco was sorely tempted. He had a terror of seeing the great white turn on him next--and even if Karkol and he had worked together in the ruins, that had been an alliance born of necessity.

Foe blood, acrid, tainted the water. Ecco sighed and shook his head. "We stay..."

Karkol snapped and bit at the water, searching for more enemies to fight. Slowly a voice (voices?) penetrated the blood-red mist in his head, forcing his conscious mind to push its way back to the surface. "Karkol? Karkol, it's okay, they're gone... they're dead..."

He shuddered and forced himself to a stop. Sight returned slowly, as if he were swimming from murky water to clear. The taste of the Foe was in the water all around... but they were not there. The shark shook his head, a little dizzy, and then looked towards Ecco and Chang, who were waiting several lengths away. They both had frightened, wary expressions on their faces. Karkol blinked as memory came back online and he remembered the recent events. The shark attempted a grin. "Uh, sorry... must've kinda lost it for a moment there..."

"You don't say," Ecco said flatly, then hesitated. "Um... are you... okay?"

"Never better, trust me." He glanced at the gates. They were hard stone, possibly two dolphin-lengths thick. Even the Foe would have trouble getting through them. "Guess we're safe for now."

The three unlikely companions looked at each other, dolphin, shark and angler-fish.

"Come on," Ecco said finally, turning to swim away. "I don't know about you guys, but I just want to get the heck out of here before they find another way out again." He paused, glancing at Karkol. "And," he said, "we need to talk." 


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

The waters were still and silent as they swam up the coast away from Atlantis. Apparently the Foe had already been here, for there was nothing living on the bare and rocky shores, and the sand below was undisturbed by any living thing. It was the first Karkol and Chang had seen of what the Foe could do, and neither liked it much.

"Creepy..." Karkol shivered, casting a hunted glance back. "This isn't like it's supposed to be..."

Ecco nodded. "I know. The Foe would make the whole world like this if they could. The Asterite said they had a world of their own once, and they bled it dry." They swam on in silence for a while, and then Ecco paused for a moment, considering how to start talking again. "Karkol, listen--"

"No, I won't." The great white swam faster, anger in the swift, jerky movements with which his tail swung. Ecco had to hurry to keep up with him, and they were leaving poor Chang behind again. Karkol didn't slow for her. He stared straight ahead, but his words were directed to Ecco. "I know, Ecco, I know. I know everything you're going to say. You have to do this alone, it'd never work out, you're a mammal and I'm a fish, we're diametrically opposed..." The shark rounded on him, a hot glint in his dark eye. "I know! Heck, my people have eaten yours ever since you first took to the water! I'm no stranger to the idea of dolphins as enemies! But it's what you said in Atlantis--this is a bigger fight!"

He paused to gather his wits. Ecco was silent, shocked by the ferocity of the great white's words. Karkol shook himself and then went on. "I've seen these things too now. I've seen what they can do. But I can fight them, Ecco--you can't yet. At the very least, you need me right now. We'll go together and find these lone-swimmers or whatever they are, and we'll work out a way to kill the Foe. Then we can think about being enemies. Okay?"

"But--" Ecco said.

Karkol fixed him with a look. "I'm coming, Ecco."

Ecco stared at the shark with a peculiar expression, trying to think of a way out of this odd partnership. Finally he sighed and bowed his head. "All right. I guess I couldn't really make you go away, anyway... if that's what you want, we'll puzzle this out together."

They were silent for awhile. Karkol slowed, some of the anger going out of his muscles. The cuts on his triangular snout glistened pale white against the dark slate-gray of his head. Ecco kept pace with the shark, thinking dark thoughts. Finally, Karkol glanced sideways and said, "We're not all that different, actually. I mean, physically."

"What?" Ecco stared at him.

"Well sure, there's the whole air-breathing thing with you, and you're smaller. But the Slayer said once that we're closer to dolphins than we are to fish. We're warm-blooded, Ecco, did you know that? That's why we're so much smarter than other fish. And we don't lay eggs." Karkol grinned slightly at his surprise. "A lot of sharks give birth to live young. Just like dolphins..."

Ecco sighed again. "I don't know how the lone-swimmers will react to you, Karkol. I mean, your average dolphin does not like sharks."

"I'll manage," Karkol said gruffly.

"I wonder if they will..." Ecco murmured to himself, with a smile.

They were interrupted by Chang as she tumbled up to them, doing the fish equivalent of staggering. The little angler was exhausted enough that she went right up alongside Karkol without any evidence of fright. "You rotten... things..." she gasped, "...you might have waited..."

"Sorry, Chang," Ecco whistled, unable to hide a hint of amusement in his voice.

Chang waited, gulping, until she had recovered some of her poise. "Listen," the angler-fish said after a moment more, "I had to catch you up because... well, because I guess I need to say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" Ecco repeated stupidly.

Chang nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. "I really need to thank you for helping me out of the Undercaves... I think," she added, giving him a sharp look. "It might have been more trouble than it was worth. But I'm glad you turned up before those things did. But Ecco, I can't help you with them. I--I'm too scared." She looked away unhappily. "I'm too little to be any use, anyway."

"You've been a lot of use," Ecco said sincerely. "Your light got me--got us, even--out of the Undercaves in the first place. And then you spotted the switch in Atlantis." He smiled. "No, Chang, never think you're no use. We both need to thank you."

She smiled, nervously. "Thanks... listen, I gotta get going, okay? It's a long way back home."

Ecco nodded, thinking of the deep darkness to which he had traveled. It had taken him to the limits of his resources to reach the depths where he had found Castor, and he had a feeling that that wasn't even a very deep dive to a sperm whale. Chang would have to go more than twice as far before she reached her abyssal home waters. "Good luck, Chang," he said quietly.

"Watch out for those damn things," Karkol added, and though there was the usual wicked tone in his voice, there was a serious look in his dark black eyes that didn't gel with the rakish grin.

Chang nodded slightly and turned to swim away. "Chang?" Ecco called suddenly. She turned back, her light glowing softly yellow in the water. He blinked, wondering what it was he could have been about to say. "I know I shouldn't ask, but if you see Castor... tell him..."

"Yes?" Chang prompted cautiously after a few more moments.

Ecco frowned. It was a measure of the trust she had in him that she was even prepared to listen, but he couldn't in all faith ask her to seek out Castor. The sperm whale was big enough to swallow her without even noticing. Would he even listen to the words of a fish? "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind... just take care, okay?"

Chang gave him a long, relieved look, and turned away again. Ecco watched as her light bobbed down through the water until it faded into the deep blue-black. They were left alone between the silver light of the moon and the darkness of the depths.

"Well, that's that," Karkol said, in a voice that wasn't all carefree cheerfulness. "Let's go."

"Poor little Chang," Ecco murmured. "I'll miss her, you know. She was pretty brave for her size..."

"Deep-down dwellers usually are," the shark said, glancing at him again. "I've been down a ways--not to where they live, of course, but far enough. There's some pretty nasty things down in the abyss. I saw one fish that was all mouth--I mean, it had this really thin long body like a sea-snake, and then this gigantic mouth with teeth that were longer than its body was wide. Scariest thing I ever saw. It could've taken a tuna whole."

"A gulper?" Ecco wondered out loud, and then shivered. Chang might prefer it down there, but he was pretty sure that he was more attached to the surface where at least you could see your enemies coming. A moment later, he gave up on the thought. "Karkol, we'd better start looking for dolphins. We're going to need to ask people about the lone-swimmers if we're ever going to find them. I don't suppose..." He eyed the shark. "Would Greshruk know?"

"The Slayer?" Karkol gave him a funny look. "You really want to go and ask her after what happened to you before?"

"I thought you could maybe, since you're, you know, her son...?"

The shark shook his head emphatically. "She'd eat me as happily as she'd have eaten you, let me tell you. I think we'd better avoid her, to be honest... when something gets away from her, she's in a bad mood for days, and believe you me, you do not want to meet the Slayer in a bad mood."

Ecco fizzed out laughter. "I thought sharks were supposed to be reverent about the Slayer!"

"I can be rude about her if I want," Karkol said with a grin. "She's my mother."

They had been swimming all this while, moving slowly north up the coastline. The seas were still empty of life, and now that the moon was high there was an eerie silver glow on the bare sand. Ecco had never seen anything quite like it... there was no such thing as a desert in the sea, but he had heard Arctic terns talking about the high places of ice where nothing could grow. Perhaps it was like this, pale and empty.

The moon slid slowly down towards the horizon, signaling the relentless approach of another day. And, with the night's waning came the sound again. The screeching, far in the distance. Ecco listened to it for a while on his own and willed it to go away--he had superlative hearing, better than Karkol's own. Finally, however, he could bear it no longer and looked towards the big gray shape that swam silently at his side.

"I know," Karkol said, catching his eye. "I've been hearing it too. They're back, aren't they?"

"Too many to fight," Ecco agreed dully. "I guess we flee again."

"I'm tired of just sneaking away," the shark said in a low growl.

Ecco sideyed him. "Don't even think about it," he advised. "You took two of them on your own, fine, but when they get together... well, Castor said they killed Carcharodon."

Karkol nodded slowly. "It's true, they did... I know I can't fight them, Ecco. Doesn't say I have to damn well like it."

The shrieking was a little louder. Ecco looked behind him nervously. "Should we go faster?" he asked.

"Probably," Karkol said tightly. "Dunno where we're gonna swim to, though. If they got into Atlantis, they can probably get into anywhere. How many, d'you reckon?"

Ecco listened hard to the alien sounds from behind them. "I don't know," he said at last. "Maybe ten, maybe a lot more. There's too many for me to count. And they can fly," he added, remembering being chased out of Sapphire Bay. "That's probably how they got in--they flew over the gates."

"And then flew out again," Karkol said with a grim expression. "Great. This isn't fair. I'm supposed to be the number-one hunter round here! I've never been hunted myself before!"

"Well, this is what it feels like." Ecco listened to the sounds again--they seemed closer. The Foe were coming for them. Would there never be any respite from this? "Come on--" he began, intending to coax the angry shark into faster swimming, when he heard something else... the mellow, flowing tones of whalesong. "Karkol, listen! Can you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Karkol began. "If you mean the Foe, I--" He broke off suddenly, cocking his head with a thoughtful expression on his head. "Uh-oh."

"What do you mean, uh-oh?" Ecco asked, staring at him. "They're whales! They can help!"

"They're killer whales, Ecco," the great white said nervously. "They're supposed to live up north. I don't know what they're doing all the way down here, but don't think they're soft like those big plankton-feeders." He had slowed, and now seemed undecided as to whether to face the killers or the Foe. "Ecco, listen--I know a bit about killer whales, news comes down on the current. They're pack hunters--they eat sharks, and dolphins too when they can get them. They'll even have a good go at a humpback whale now and again. We have to stay clear of them!"

Ecco was shaking his head. "No, we can't. The Foe will catch us up. We have to ask them what they know. Look, you can stay back if you want... I'm going to talk to them."

"Got a big rock handy to hide behind?" Karkol asked sarkily, following with obvious reluctance.

It was easy to find the killer whales. Their song filled the empty water with pops, beeps and sharp little tingling sounds. Ecco judged that there were around eight of them, mainly adults but with one or two younglings in tow. He and Karkol swam slowly around a point and came across the whales in a sheltered bay that looked very similar to Sapphire Bay itself. Long, plump, piebald shapes slid through the water, cutting its surface with long black fins. The whales were black and silver in the moonlight.

"Here goes nothing," Ecco whispered to Karkol, and then searched his memory before realizing he only really knew how to address a blue whale properly. Corse hadn't told him anything else, save for one bit of advice. Be sincere... He raised his voice. "Hello?" he called. "Can I talk to... uh, whoever's in charge here?"

"We're dead," Karkol muttered.

The fluting tones stopped. Ecco's sonar picked out swift shapes sliding through the water--he backfinned quickly and felt Karkol's rough hide brush against his body. For some odd reason, that comforted him, though the shark was just as nervous as he himself was. The killer whales came glittering out of the blue towards them in a regimented formation, silver moonlight pouring off their gleaming bodies.

"Don't eat us!" Ecco cried out desperately, seeing it all end in a roiling mass of orca jaws. "Please, we need your help!"

The whales approached--he felt Karkol trembling beside him, forcing back the urge to turn into blood-red death in the water. Ecco pressed his tail against the shark's side for a moment, willing him not to snap. Less than a length away, though, the killers drew to a halt. Small brown eyes flashed fiercely as the piebald hunters examined he and Karkol up close, a ring of hot black-and-white bodies.

"Ha, talking food?"

"Bizarre!"

"What do they want?"

"Can we eat them?"

"Quiet!" This last was a blast of sound which sent the whales backfinning hurriedly. A huge, scarred individual, fully two dolphin-lengths longer than Karkol, swam up majestically as the other killers backed off. Ecco and Karkol watched silently as the pod leader examined them. He took his time before speaking, so that their nervousness reached a peak. At last, though, the pod leader spoke, and his tones brought the other whales back into a regimented order. "We will hear them out, hunt-brothers. The little singer asked for help. You know the law!"

"But it's food, hunt-master!"

The pod leader growled without turning his head. The speaker subsided. Ecco and Karkol exchanged glances, and then the pod leader spoke out again. "You, little singer, and you, hungry one. Speak swiftly or not at all. Who are you?"

What do we have to lose? Ecco wondered. And Karkol certainly wasn't about to speak up... looked like it was down to Ecco again. He let out air nervously. "Sir," he said, as politely as he could, "This is Karkol, and I'm Ecco. We ne-"

The whales had erupted into a cacophony of excited singing. One or two even fluked up and breached, throwing themselves right out of the water in exuberance. "Ecco! Ecco!"

"What'd you say?" Karkol asked, nonplussed, and then stared around at the joyful killers, who certainly seemed in no mood to think of eating. "Carcharodon's teeth, whatever it was we might actually get out of this alive!"

The pod leader was the only one who had remained aloof from all the excitement. He waited in the water in front of them, a streamlined bulk of black and white, gazing at them coolly through his small eyes. "Ecco... so you are Ecco."

"Y-yes..." Ecco blinked. "You've heard of me?"

"Where have you been recently, little hunt-brother?" the killer whale asked with an expression of astonished amusement. "On the moon? Your name has been sung up and down these shores for the past three days! You're the one who is going to fight the Foe!" 


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Ecco was surprised to find that he was fast becoming a living legend. News traveled fast along Karkol's current, it seemed--the killer whales already knew all about his encounter with Castor the sperm whale, and how he had outwitted Greshruk the Slayer. As he filled them in about what had happened after that, he couldn't help wondering how long it would be before the Atlantis story was common knowledge too. He swam, Karkol ever at his left, and the killer whale kept pace on his right so that they formed a triad in the still water--Ecco in the middle, those who would normally be his mortal enemies on either side.

"So," the killer said at last, "you come here, and with the white shark too. It was lucky for you that we had heard your story before, or it'd have been the worse for the both of you!"

Karkol grinned. "I nearly ate Ecco too, when we first met... he's probably getting used to it by now."

"Hardly," Ecco said with a wry smile.

The killer whale rose and blew, then rejoined them. "I am Khorik, alpha male of this pack," he said in a more formal tone. "My mate is Benia, and my children are Kalen and Kren. The others are my hunt-brothers and hunt-sisters, and under my protection." The formalized introduction over, the whale rolled a thoughtful brown eye in his direction. "Tell me, little hunt-brother, how did you know the law? We never expected to hear it from one of you."

"I'm sorry, sir, but what law?" Ecco asked helplessly.

The whale looked at him with surprise now. "We have but three laws, Ecco. The first is that any lone-swimmer who asks for our aid must be allowed to tell his tale. Surely you knew this before you approached us?" Ecco's expression told him everything, and the whale snorted laughter. "Truly, you have Delphinius's own luck! And courage to match..."

"So," Karkol said, breaking in, "can you help us out at all? We need to find the lone-swimmers as fast as possible, if you get my drift." The sound of Foe was getting closer, very much so.

Khorik glanced towards the open waters. "Curse those creatures..." He began to swim, swiftly, back towards the other whales, calling back to Ecco and Karkol, "Follow me!"

The killers were clustered in a tight group, facing inwards. Ecco heard whispers passing between them, but he couldn't make out the words before Khorik cruised into the group and split it up. "Listen to me, hunt-brothers and hunt-sisters!" the alpha male announced in ringing tones. "The Foe are close by! We must defend the destined ones!" Turning again, he faced Ecco and Karkol. "I can tell you where you will find the lone-swimmers, but it will be a difficult journey for you and the Foe are already closing in. Swim with us, hunt-brothers! We'll protect you!"

Karkol remained still, frozen with indecision. "Come on!" Ecco yelled at him, springing forward through the water. With an effort, the shark swung his tail and raced after the fleeing dolphin as the killer whales headed out into the open seas. Black-and-white shapes closed in around them and the water was filled with the fluting sounds of the killers' voices. They chased the moon to the east, the screams of the Foe always behind and closing, closing...

It was somewhere between midnight and morning, and the moon was a great semicircle above the waves when the Foe finally caught up with the killers. They had swum fast, fast as only they could under pressure. Karkol was built for long-distance swimming, but Ecco struggled to keep up with his smaller body... and even Karkol had difficulty maintaining the killers' breakneck speed. Neither of them realized what had happened at first--only that there was a sudden squeal at the back of the pack, followed by a flurry of movement behind them. Then, suddenly, Khorik stopped dead and Ecco nearly ran into him. Dark chitinous shapes ghosted through the water towards them from both ahead and behind.

"We're surrounded!" shouted a whale whose name Ecco did not know.

"Save the destined ones!" That was Khorik, fierce and furious in the face of danger.

"Let me fight!" Karkol roared, his jaws working at the sight of the Foe. Ecco nudged him sharply in the gills to remind the shark that they were outnumbered. The whales backed in around them, pushing the dolphin and the shark into the center of a black-and-white ring whose outside bristled with teeth.

The Foe rushed them, and suddenly the water became full of blood and screaming. Ecco felt Karkol trembling violently, and knew that the shark was only just holding in check his natural instincts. These were feeding-frenzy conditions. The whales were fighting like demons, screaming through the water as they bit and tore at their alien victims... but there was no way it could go on forever. Instants of death unfolded before their eyes--an old killer, jaws clamped down on a Foe, struggling to shake off another--a pair of them, great gashes in their variegated skin, howling in fury as they pursued five of the monsters. Horror-struck, Ecco watched as one of the younger whales fell victim to three Foe. Its beautiful piebald body ripped right open, the youngster went belly-up with a slow, sad grace. The Foe fell ravenously upon the corpse, tearing at the shining skin, but two more killers attacked them roaring in fury, and drove them off. Karkol had his eyes tight shut as he fought to keep the blood-red mist from entering his brain.

"Ecco! Karkol!" Suddenly Khorik appeared through the bloodstained water, black and white and red. Three more of the whales were at his side. "We'll storm the circle!" the alpha male roared. "Follow me and prepare to make a dash for it!"

"We can't leave you!" Karkol yelled, seemingly about to rush into battle himself.

The killer regarded the shark with an expression that was oddly calm. "You're the only hope for our world, my friends. You must escape, no matter what the cost. We are prepared to give our lives for this beautiful planet... please, accept our gift!"

Ecco blinked hard, fighting back tears. "We will," he said softly, his voice cracking up with emotion. "Karkol, come on--we haven't got any choice."

The whales surrounded them again, Khorik at the front. Ecco sideyed the two nearest them, noticing that one was an old and very large female... Benia, Khorik's mate? And the other whales were both young males... Kalen and Kren, his calves? O, Delphinius...

"Ecco!" Khorik was facing front, his eyes narrowed in concentration. The Foe were advancing. "Listen to me now! When we get out, you must swim without looking back! Follow the moon east as fast and as long as you can. The lone-swimmers live where the moon sets, understand?"

"Yes," Ecco said brokenly. "I understand."

"Then good luck," the killer whale said fiercely, "and may good fortune be your companion. Forward!"

The whales rushed into battle, jaws agape. Ecco barely had time to see Khorik close with a huge Foe drone, because then Karkol was rushing forward, pushing him into motion. He started to swim, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Karkol stuck at his side, swimming doggedly and saying nothing. His black eyes stared into the distance where the moon lay huge.

The Foe did not pursue them--perhaps they did not notice that they had escaped. Perhaps they simply had more interesting things to do. At any rate, the alien screeching soon died away in their ears... as did the singing of the killers. Neither Ecco nor Karkol slowed down even slightly--they raced through the silent waters together, following the silver. There were no words between them. Nothing could have been said. Both of them knew that there was no way the killers would escape the mayhem of the battle.

Few creatures were abroad this night. News traveled fast about the Foe as well, apparently, and most of the larger creatures seemed to be in hiding. Once or twice they saw other animals--a big tiger shark actually broke off pursuit of a wounded green turtle and turned in amazement to watch the dolphin and the young great white flash past. Ecco was too exhausted and distressed to even feel frightened.

The moon slipped down into the horizon, and close to it the sun began to gather its power for another day. By the time the sky had changed from velvet black to streaky pink, sending the stars into hiding, the moon was merely a bead of silver on the surface of the sea. In a few minutes more it disappeared utterly. Ecco slowed until he was just moving automatically through the water; he was shivering with exhaustion. Karkol was little better off than he.

They cruised together, going in more or less the same direction in which they had been previously headed. As yet there was no sign of shore or even of the lone-swimmers.

Finally Karkol said, "They're dead, aren't they?"

Ecco couldn't respond for a long moment--emotion threatened to strangle the words. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes, I think so. They couldn't have gotten out of that, no way."

There was silence between them for a while longer.

"You mammals," Karkol said at last, with a tone of awe. "You're incredible... you burn so brightly." He turned one eye towards Ecco, who was looking at him in surprise. "You'd never see a shark doing that," Karkol elaborated, and a bitter tone crept into his voice. "We're too damn selfish. Look at Greshruk. All she cares about is eating. You never hear about a shark saving the damn world."

"Maybe you'll be the first," Ecco suggested.

"Hah. Not bloody likely. The moment I smell blood, I turn into a raving maniac." Karkol rose up to the surface so that his fin cut air; he swung his tail moodily, glowering. The pectoral fins were pointed stiffly downwards, telling Ecco as clearly as the voice had that the shark was upset. Karkol seemed to struggle for the next words. "Those whales gave their lives to save us. If they were sharks, they'd have eaten us before you got out more than a hello. It's all we are--damn eating machines." He glanced towards Ecco. "You know what it's like, never stopping, spending your whole life looking for your next meal? Eventually you turn into Greshruk, seeing the world in terms of vegetable, mineral and edible." Karkol dropped his head. "I may belong to an order that's three hundred million years old as the Slayer's so fond of pointing out, but compared to you I'm just a dumb stupid fish. ...I don't even know why I'm talking about this," he said suddenly, looking up. "What's the damn point?"

"Don't give up," Ecco said softly. "I'm upset too, Karkol, but we have to think of their sacrifice. They thought our job was so important they were willing to give their lives to help us do it. We can't grieve yet, we don't have time. And you're not a stupid fish." He smiled slightly, and nudged the shark in the ribs. "Come on, cheer up. We can't be far from the lone-swimmers by now, we chased the moon all night."

"Yeah..." Karkol sighed. "We better keep going. The Foe caught up last time, they'll do it again."

Ecco glanced back, but the seas behind them were clear. In front, the sun burst over the horizon in a fountain of gold, and scattered hot white sparkles over the waves. The dolphin blinked, half-closing his eyes against the sudden glare, and then stuck his head up out of the water, spy-hopping to take a better look. There was a smudge against the distant sky.

"Karkol, look--land!" He couldn't keep an excited tone out of his voice. "The lone-swimmers must live on the coast here!"

"What are we looking for, anyway?" the shark asked crossly.

Ecco shook his head--he didn't know. "I suppose it must be some sort of bay or inlet. The lone-swimmers tend to move around a lot, though--I didn't imagine that they'd actually have a home. Still, that's what Khorik said..." He didn't say what else was in his mind--the way he would feel if they found the bay and it was full of dead water. He was in no mood to tempt fate. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the sad brown eyes of the young killer who had died in front of him. The Foe must die...

"What?" Karkol asked.

"Nothing." Ecco looked away in embarrassment. He hadn't realized that he had spoken out loud.

They continued towards the distant smudge of land at a good pace, mindful now of their empty stomachs and the expanse of empty water that lay behind them. There was still no sign of Foe, but Ecco had little faith that that would last long. Several times now he had thought that he had gotten away for good, but somehow they had always found his trail again. You had to give them marks for persistency, anyway...

The sun was fully up, a great golden globe hanging low on the horizon. Its bottom was slightly cut off by the shapes of mountains; the land was approaching at last. A seagull bobbed past on the waves, a fierce little air elemental trespassing on the plane of water. It took off in a hurry when it spotted Karkol's fin below it.

"They're funny things, those birds are," Karkol said suddenly. "Don't know whether they belong to the air, the land or the sea. They're happy enough in all three."

"Some birds have chosen, though," Ecco said, remembering conversations he had had once with an old albatross wintering in their bay. "There are birds that can only swim--their wings have turned into fins. Penguins, I think they're called."

"There's some of them where I grew up," Karkol said. "I've never eaten one, though. They moved too quick." He smiled a little at Ecco's curious stare. "I was only a sprat, they were a bit big for me any way at the time."

Ecco nodded, thankful to see the shark in a slightly better mood. Karkol happy was a little off-putting at times, but Karkol upset was something to be steered clear of. He turned his attention to the front again, happy enough to swim on in silence for now, but then stopped dead. Karkol overshot and had to swing back to come around beside him again. "What's up now?" the shark asked. "Don't tell me you can hear those things in front of us!"

"No... I hear dolphins." Ecco grinned. "Dolphins! Ahead of us! Karkol, we made it!" He wanted to start jumping into the air for joy, turning barrel rolls. The exhaustion had practically gone. "Come on!" Ecco said joyfully, forging ahead. Karkol swam beside him, catching some of his enthusiasm. The deep blue-black of the ocean faded away underneath them and became the sandy blue of a coastal shore, and when they dived away from the surface the water was full of life--fish, crabs, coral, all kinds of things. It could not have been more obvious that the Foe had not got here yet.

They spread out a couple of lengths and snatched fish as they went, each keeping away from the other by an unconscious accord--not that Karkol would have willingly attacked Ecco after all this, but the shark knew better than any how blood in the water made him act. They were both half-starved after so long together and so long without food, and they left twin trails of destruction behind them, Karkol snapping and biting his way through entire shoals of wrasse, Ecco picking his moments and his targets with customary care.

The duo met up again on the other side of the reef, tired but sated. But it was here that they came across the first problem.

The sea ended, quite suddenly, in a rocky cliff covered with anemones and seagrass. Karkol and Ecco both nosed around, but they could find no trace of the mysterious dolphins. The singing had stopped when they were somewhere over the reef and there was no sign whatsoever of the singers. Karkol frowned. "We came to the right place, didn't we? I mean, the moon set right here!"

Ecco sighed, turning in preparation to swim back down the coast. "Maybe we took a wrong turn on the reef. We'd better go up and down the shore a bit, take a look around. And these are the lone-swimmers we're talking about--they're very good at disappearing."

Karkol growled softly and turned back... a moment later, he turned again and re-examined the cliff face with sharp black eyes. Ecco waited, looking at him in some surprise.

"There's something funny about this," the shark said in a low, menacing voice. "Ecco, take a closer look..."

"Huh?" He swam up. "I don't see anything... it's just a wall..."

"Look again."

Ecco blinked, and looked again. And then, quite suddenly, he got it.

There were quite strong waves heading into shore. They were banging against the rocky cliff face with powerful force--it was a really exposed coastline, one of the most savage Ecco had seen with the possible exception of Greshruk's seal colony. But the cliff face was covered in seagrass and all sorts of fragile animal and plant life. They should have been swept away at the first little wave, never mind this relentless pounding. Ecco's eyes narrowed as he watched a small winkle making its way over an exposed promontory--the gust of water that nearly blew him tail over tip didn't even wobble the tiny shellfish.

"You're right!" he said in amazement. "What is this? Some kind of trick?"

"No trick, shark-friend!" came a new voice that was barely distinguishable from the squealing scrape of a dolphin's battle-cry. Ecco and Karkol whirled and saw five dolphins surrounding them in a semi-circle of hostile bodies. They were a little smaller than Ecco himself, very slender, and white with an odd pattern of dusky gray and black... with stars on their sides, they could have come straight out of the pictures of Tidesinger in the Undercaves.

The lone-swimmers!

It was right about then that Ecco realized the second problem. The dolphins' savage, angry eyes were fixed on he and Karkol, and they did not look as if they wanted to talk.

These dolphins did not like uninvited visitors. 


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Ecco swallowed as the dusky dolphins closed in on them. His gaze went from face to face, seeing nothing but hostility there. The lone-swimmers seemed about ready to charge--he had seen fighters in his own pod hit sharks hard enough to knock them right out of the water. Corse and Klik had together once battered a half-grown tiger shark to death. He felt Karkol trembling again, and pressed himself up against the shark to remind him that they were on business. "No," he said softly, barely more than a whisper. Karkol heard and stilled himself with a visible effort.

The dolphins stopped less than a length away, their hot, savage eyes staring at Ecco and Karkol with terrible intent. "You, shark-friend," the largest one growled in Ecco's direction. There was a weight of scorn and even disgust in his tone. "By what right do you come sniffing and squeaking around here? And how dare you bring one of these beasts with you?"

Ecco felt his jaw tense at the way the dolphins referred to Karkol. Careful, don't lose it, they'll be happy to kill us both right now... "Sir," he said carefully, "I am called Ecco, and the shark is Karkol. We came to ask for your help."

Ecco's name failed to work its magic this time round: the dolphins didn't even blink at his name or at the request. One or two of them even closed in a little further, curling their tail flukes as if they were prepared to charge. Karkol let out a soft growl--nothing more than an aural hint--but the over-eager dolphins backed off a little.

"Help." The contempt in the dusky dolphin's voice was frightening to hear. "You come uninvited into our waters--you bring a kraak'i'hui mud-spawn murderer into our midst--and you have the temerity to ask us for help? Why in Tidesinger's name should we help you? You are shark-friend!"

"What's wrong with that?" Karkol muttered. Ecco whacked him in the gills to shut him up.

"I'm sorry if we're trespassing," he said to the dusky dolphins, keeping his voice as calm and polite as he could--though by now he wanted to attack them almost as much as Karkol did. "We saw no sign that these waters were protected by you. And as for my being what you say, shark-friend... well, I am. Karkol and I have been traveling together for protection." Ecco wanted to breathe, but he didn't dare leave the circle. An angry note crept into his voice as he went on, "I suppose you've heard about the little trouble outside these shores?"

The dusky dolphins looked from one to the other. Whistles and squeaks passed quietly between them--Ecco listened, but the words were in a language he didn't know. "What are they talking about?" Karkol hissed. Ecco just shook his head.

Finally the one who seemed to be the leader turned back to them. His eyes, strangely pale, slid over them with a burning intensity, examining every inch of them. There was puzzlement in the dusky dolphin's eyes now, as well as anger, and Ecco suppressed a smile. He seemed to be having that effect on a lot of people lately.

"You, shark-friend," the dusky dolphin said after a moment more. Ecco realized that they were all now determinedly ignoring Karkol. "Tell us by what right you come here? Who sent you? How did you find this place?"

Ecco glanced around at the dolphins, then slowly rose to breathe, Karkol at his side as ever. The other dolphins stayed with him, one or two breathing themselves as they reached the surface. That done, Ecco sighed, looked into the pale eyes of the leader, and began on his long tale.

It seemed to take longer this time to tell than it had done before. When Ecco grew tired, Karkol took over; the dolphins shifted nervously and cast him suspicious looks as he went through the story of their escape from Atlantis and the killer whales' sacrifice. The leader's gaze switched from Ecco to Karkol, taking in the distressed expression in the shark's warm black eyes, but the other dolphins didn't seem to want to look at him. Ecco nudged Karkol gently, warning the shark to stay calm and show no aggression.

Finally, the lead dolphin let out a soft whistle--a delphine way of clearing-the-throat to prepare himself for speaking further. "So you come here to seek help against the Foe. I see." And he was silent then, just looking at the others who looked back at him with varied expressions. Words in that strange other language floated across the water as the dusky dolphins began another muted discussion. Ecco and Karkol waited silently to hear whatever decision they came up with. I've come so far, Ecco thought sadly. Please, Delphinius, don't let a bunch of snobby singers stop me now...

"There is a precedent," the leader said suddenly, turning back to him. "In the time of our ancestors, Tidesinger himself came to these waters with a shark as his companion. The need was dire, and because he was who he was, we let him through. In his memory we will do the same for you, star-brow--but not for the other."

"He goes, or neither of us," Ecco said determinedly.

Karkol turned towards him with a worried look in his black eyes. "Ecco, I'm not sure whether that's a good idea. They sure don't look like they want me around... I can wait here for you."

"No, Karkol. We're in this together, remember?" Ecco didn't take his eyes off the lead dolphin, though his voice was directed to the shark. "After what we've been through together? No way I'm letting these guys brush you off. Besides, it's not safe out here alone--what about Foe?" He raised his voice then, refusing to let the leader's pale gaze intimidate him. "You hear me? Karkol has to come!"

"You are in no position to make demands--" the lead dolphin began, but then broke off. Ecco stifled a squeal of surprise as a white body passed right by him, seemingly materialized out of nowhere. The new dolphin cruised past, ignoring his surprise. Karkol whirled and examined the cliff face behind them with a suspicious frown on his face.

"Afarellan says that the shark is to be allowed in," the newcomer said quietly to the leader. "He has been expecting these two for several days."

The leader started, and looked at Ecco with an astonished expression for a moment before he covered up his momentary lapse. "Very well," was all he said, and he nearly spit the words as it was. "You may bring the gray one with you. But I warn you, star-brow... you are fully responsible for its conduct. If anything happens, I shall kill you myself."

"Can I just point out," Karkol said loudly, "that I am not an 'it', and I have never eaten a dolphin in my life!" There was an angry tone in his voice.

"Don't get mad," Ecco hissed under his breath. "That's what he wants you to do. Control, Karkol, control..."

"This bites," the shark muttered bitterly, but he fell silent anyway. They both turned as the white dolphins swam past them, heading towards the rock face. Ecco nearly inhaled water as the leader passed straight through.

"Wha..?"

The new dolphin, the one who had saved them, appeared in front of him without sound. There was an amused look in the eyes, which were deep black as Karkol's own. She was female, and very beautiful with her sooty black extremities and soft white body. "Don't be deceived," she said kindly. "Not everything in the sea is what it seems. Follow me!"

Ecco glanced at Karkol, who seemed as nonplussed as he. The other dolphins had all disappeared by now, vanishing one by one through the solid wall of rock. Slowly he began to swim forward, Karkol at his side, following the female towards the cliff. The water washed around them, disturbed by the proximity of the shore. As they approached the wall, Ecco slowed despite himself. It looked perfectly solid to him--he could pick out the tiniest details with his sonar. He sneaked another glance at the confused shark, and then stared forward in shock as the white dolphin swam calmly through the stone. "How do they do that?" he asked helplessly.

"Guess we've just got to try it," Karkol said reluctantly, and swam forward. He slowed to a crawl a length or so from the wall, and then slowly reached out and gingerly touched it with his nose. Instantly he let out a yell of surprise and backed off again. "It is! It's solid!"

"Solid? But they just went right through!" Ecco swam up and touched the wall. It felt solid enough to him too... "What's the secret?" he yelled, frustrated beyond words.

A gust of water came suddenly, unexpectedly, and flung Ecco forward tail-over-tip. He didn't have time to think or even prepare himself for the crash... which never came. He tumbled forward two or three dolphin-lengths before managing to recover himself and re-orient himself the correct way up. Conscious that the light level was different, he opened his eyes and looked around properly.

The rock wall was behind him. He was in the warm shallow waters of a lagoon... but what a lagoon! The sides were sheer stone, reaching up for many hundreds of feet, and above was a sky... Well, Ecco was a hundred per cent sure that it had been midmorning when he had reached the stone wall, but above him there was a night sky that was dazzling in its brilliance. The five stars of Delphinius were brightest of all... that and the moon. There was a gigantic moon in the sky, the largest he had ever seen. Its silver light filled the lagoon like water. Ecco turned slowly on the spot, staring around him in utter amazement. There were plants here, and fish, none of which he had ever seen before. And there was the female dolphin, just a few lengths away. As if revealed by the moonlight, tiny points of light glittered all over her white sides. She smiled at him but said nothing.

Karkol... Where was Karkol? Ecco turned back to face the wall. It looked solid from this side, too. "Karkol?" he yelled. "Karkol, are you there? Can you hear me?"

"Ecco?" The reply was muffled. "Where are you? I can hear you, but I can't see you!"

"I think I've got it!" he called back. "The wall--it's an illusion! You have to stop believing in it!"

"What? How?"

"I don't know!"

Outside, Karkol blinked and stared at the barrier. It looked as solid as before. "An illusion?" he repeated. "But... it looks so real..." If he charged it, he'd bang his nose. He had already felt how real it was.

The shark got another good idea. He backed off, and then closed his eyes. Water before me... plain ol' water... Slowly he began to swim forward. The wall was somewhere in front... maybe not yet... couple more lengths... just water. He kept swimming, and encountered no wall. It had to be there... any moment he'd bump into it. Where was it?

"Karkol, you did it!"

Startled by the sound of Ecco's voice right beside his ear, he opened his eyes and then stared around in shock as he saw the bay. The barrier was behind him--he had passed right through it. "The wall..?"

"It's just an illusion," Ecco said. "If you believe in it, it's real. Look!"

The rock face was still visible now, but there was a shimmer to it like a heat-haze. For the first time Karkol could see the faint seams where the illusionary wall joined the real one. "Well, I'll..." he said softly. "Talk about a good trick. Nobody'd ever find this place. What's with the sky?" Suddenly he took a closer look at Ecco, narrowing his eyes. "You know those marks on your head are glowing?" he asked.

"Huh? They are?" Ecco couldn't see the stars, of course, but now that Karkol had drawn his attention to it, he was aware of a faint diffuse glow somewhere between his eyes.

The white dolphin was a few feet away. She inclined her forequarters towards them, spreading her fins in a gesture of respect. "Explanations will have to wait for now. Afarellan wishes to speak to you, young one--and the shark too. Please, follow me."

"Wait!" Ecco said quickly, hurrying to catch up with her. "What is this place? And who are you? And--who is Afarellan, and how did he know we were coming?"

The white dolphin glanced at him, a smile in her flashing dark eyes. "So many questions... This is Lunar Bay, the home of the children of Tidesinger--it is protected by an old power of ours. My name is Naylle, and Afarellan is the leader here. He has the gift of farsense. For days now he has been speaking of you, Ecco--and then of you, Karkol."

Other dolphins were headed their way, scything swift through the still water of the bay. Naylle let out a whistle that sounded slightly worried. "Please stay calm, both of you, and do not give them any cause to attack. We are proud people, poor at taking orders... I will tell them to leave us alone, but it will be best if you also present a harmless appearance."

Ecco glanced at Karkol, who looked worried himself. It was all very well telling a great white shark to look harmless.

The other dolphins drew up all around them. Whistled conversation shivered through the water, Naylle's gentle tones contrasted with the sharp, angry sounds of the others. Karkol flinched away as one of the white ones swept right past him--it took all his self-control not to snap at the dolphin. Ecco stayed right beside the shark, trying to give him comfort from his own presence. He was comforted himself to see that Naylle seemed to be winning her argument; the others fell back a little, but still followed them in a pack eight or ten strong, their hot eyes on the tail of the shark.

"Don't look back," Naylle said softly. "Just follow me." She dived, heading down towards the bottom of the lagoon. Ecco and Karkol followed as quickly as they could, not wanting to think about the angry dolphins they were leaving behind. Out of the blue below them coalesced a building of sorts... almost like the ones that had been in Atlantis. But this one was in good repair, its spires and domes complete and glistening in the cool white moonlight. Ecco glanced at Karkol with a question in his eyes.

Naylle swept forward, stopping the two guards who rose to attack with a few swift words. Ecco and Karkol hurried to catch up as the white dolphin entered through a hole in the side of the building. A few moments later they were swimming through a wide corridor, decorated with pictures of a very familiar white dolphin.

"This is Tidesinger, isn't it?" Ecco asked excitedly, catching up with Naylle.

She favored him with a surprised look. "Yes, it is. The reliefs depict Tidesinger's journey. I'm surprised you recognized them. Do you know the legend of Tidesinger?"

"I've heard some of it," he admitted. "From all sorts of people. What I don't know is how he defeated the Foe."

"Afarellan will help you with that," Naylle said softly.

Karkol was staring around in wonder--he had never seen the pictures before. Suddenly he stopped dead in the corridor, his eyes on one of the pictures. "That's my mother!" he exclaimed, loudly enough to stop Ecco in his tracks too. The dolphin came jetting back to take a look. Sure enough, there was the white-and-black form of Tidesinger, swimming alongside a rather smaller Slayer. It was undoubtedly Greshruk--the pale body, free of slate-gray pigment, was unmistakable.

Naylle nodded slightly. "Once before, as you have already heard, a dolphin and a shark came to us together to ask for our help against the Foe. The dolphin was Lord Tidesinger, and the shark was Greshruk daughter of Carcharodon." She favored Karkol with a long look. "So, you are the scion of Greshruk? This is interesting... very interesting indeed."

Ecco blinked, unable to think of anything to say. Greshruk? From what he had seen of the Slayer, he couldn't imagine her swimming alongside a dolphin under any circumstances... at least, not without eating it shortly after. Karkol seemed as astonished as he was--the shark kept opening and closing his mouth, as if he wanted to say something but couldn't think what it was.

Naylle turned and swam off down the corridor. Ecco and Karkol followed after a moment's hesitation, staying a couple of lengths behind the white dolphin as she headed through an open doorway and into a larger room. "Are you getting this?" Karkol muttered.

"The Slayer? I can't believe it." Ecco fizzed laughter. "Can you imagine, Karkol? Greshruk talking to dolphins?"

"She sure never said anything about it to me..."

They swam out of the corridor together, and entered the large room. Preoccupied as they had been, it took a few moments for them to notice their surroundings properly. But when Ecco opened his eyes and took a proper look, he was astounded all over again.

The circular chamber was decorated with the reliefs of Tidesinger once again, and on the back wall was a life-size picture of the songster himself. Precious jewels glittered on his sides, and Ecco was reminded again of the five stars he himself bore. Strange machinery filled the place, not least a great cylinder with a crystal in it that was much like the one that had been in Atlantis. The moon featured highly in the decorations here... always the full moon, the silvery one.

There was another white dolphin waiting here for them--a very old one, ravaged now by time. But there was a spark in his pale eyes that was oddly powerful and contrasted with his wasted frame. There was wisdom in that gaze, and an ancient kind of strength. For a moment Ecco thought that it truly was the mysterious Tidesinger...

"Welcome to Lunar Bay, my young friends," the old one said. His voice was still strong--one of the most powerful Ecco had ever heard. He got the feeling that that voice was only just being held in check. "I am Afarellan, the leader of the lone-swimmers... and I know who you are, Ecco son of Rhiellan and Karkol son of Greshruk. I have been waiting for you for a very long time." 


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

When Ecco had found his voice again, the first thing he asked was, "Rhiellan?" It took a moment for that to work its way through, but his befuddled brain had already noted the similarity between that name and the others he had heard. "Rhiellan? A lone-swimmer? You knew my father?"

Afarellan gravely inclined his head. "Yes, Ecco. I... knew your father, long ago. He was one of us. The stars you bear on your head come from him."

"Is he here?" Ecco asked, suddenly excited beyond words.

But the old dolphin shook his head. "No, Ecco, I am sorry. Your father..." He sighed. "Your father was... taken."

"By the Foe?"

"By a shark." Afarellan's pale eyes, blue like the sky, met Karkol's. "A white pointer like your friend. It was many years ago. I do not hold grudges against your kind, young Karkol. You do what you are designed to do, as we must all do. It is the only true law in the sea." Karkol looked unhappily at Ecco, who looked back without any words to say.

Afarellan rose gracefully and took a breath from the air at the top of the chamber. "But this is not the time," he said quietly, returning. "The Foe are our enemy now, not each other. It seems that this is a lesson which you two have been learning over the past few days." The old dolphin glanced between them quickly. "We will do everything in our power to help you, as we helped Tidesinger long ago. The Foe cannot find this place yet--it is hidden by an ancient song of power. You passed through the stone to get here; you know of that."

"Yes," Ecco said softly, making an effort to get his brain working again. "You know why we've come?"

"You seek the song that will defeat the Foe." Afarellan nodded slightly. "Yes, I know. But you are very young, and you are still inexperienced in battle... I fear that your strength may not be enough for the task ahead of you." He looked away for a long moment, finding solace in the picture of Tidesinger. "Ecco, do you know what you have to do?"

"No," Ecco said truthfully. "That's what I've spent the past couple of weeks trying to find out."

"You must destroy the Foe ship. If you destroy the brood mother, you destroy the Foe. But they will keep the brood mother heavily guarded by her strongest servants." Afarellan sighed. "I have felt them, Ecco... they have been building a new ship, far down in the deep. It is almost ready now. You have at most three days before it rises from the water into the sky. If the Foe escape Earth, no power of ours will be able to stop them."

"Then where is it?" Ecco asked fiercely. "Karkol and I will find it and destroy it, if that's what's needed!"

"It is deep within the abyss, Ecco," Afarellan said simply. "Not even with the Asterite's power could you dive that far--not even without the need to breathe. Ask Karkol--he will tell you what the deep-down does to those not used to it."

"It's true," Karkol answered, sending an unhappy look in Ecco's direction. "We'd never be able to make it in two days. The water pressure would crush us. I've seen what happens when you take a deep-down fish and bring it to the surface too fast--it explodes. Can you imagine the opposite of that?"

Ecco could--he shuddered. "Then what do we do?" he asked helplessly. "If we can't defeat the Foe that way, what else can we do?"

"Do you remember the story of Tidesinger?" Afarellan asked.

"Singing down the moon?" Ecco blinked. "Of course I do, it's all I've been hearing over the past few days. What good will it do us if the Foe are in the abyss?"

The old dolphin laughed a little. "Ecco! Remember that the Foe are going to leave the Earth soon! Perhaps if you used the Moonsong once again, you could intercept the ship on its way. They will be off their guard then--they will never expect an attack from you to come while they are in the air."

"But I can't breathe in air," Karkol said simply, and then his eyes widened. "No! Don't make him go alone! He needs me! He--"

"Patience," Afarellan answered with gentleness in his eyes. "No, I would not ask Ecco to go alone, and neither will I ask him to take one he does not know. But there is one more thing you must consider--the Foe ship will have no air. If you could not breathe on the way up the moonstream, Ecco would drown on the ship. We have a gift to give you both that will allow you both to go, but it is a double-edged sword. You must think very carefully before you accept it."

Ecco and Karkol exchanged confused glances. "What is it?" Karkol asked eventually. Ecco rose to breathe, Afarellan's words having reminded him of the need.

Afarellan paused for a long moment, thinking over what he would say. Eventually he nodded slightly to himself and began to speak again. "We are the keepers of certain ancient Powers. The Power of Song will be yours alone, Ecco, for you are the only one who can wield it. It will allow you to battle the Foe. This is what you came here to acquire." The old one paused again. "There are two more Powers. One we keep hidden in a secret place far from here--it has been used only once, and never shall be again. The third and last is the Power of Air." He paused, looking at them out of his pale blue eyes--strange eyes, in a dolphin. "If you accept it, like the Foe you will no longer depend on oxygen to survive. You will be able to swim in water or in air without ill effect."

"Forgive me for saying so," Karkol broke in, looking puzzled, "but I don't see how that could possibly be a bad thing. I mean, it'd make us both stronger, right?"

"But it involves giving up a part of yourselves," Afarellan said simply. "You will be unlike all others of your kind. Such power affects everybody differently." He paused. "We have given the Power of Air to only two others in history."

"One was Greshruk, wasn't it?" Ecco asked quietly.

The old dolphin looked at him with a flash of blue. "Yes, it was," he answered. "You have a quick mind, Ecco. We gave the Power to Greshruk and to Lord Tidesinger so that they could use the Moonsong. But we did not foresee the effect it would have on the both of them. It is a kind of immortality, you see. Freed from the need to breathe, Greshruk found a new need--the need to kill. She became the Slayer, the ocean's angel of death. And so she has swum on down the ages, never tiring, never sleeping, growing greater and more terrible."

"What happened to Tidesinger?" Ecco had to ask.

Afarellan was silent for a long while. "We do not know," he said at last. "Lord Tidesinger has not been seen for very many years. Here in Lunar Bay we honor his memory."

They were silent. Afarellan looked from one to the other, then glanced swiftly at Naylle. She nodded without speaking, turned and left the chamber. "You may consider your decision," the old dolphin said, backfinning respectfully. "But there is not much time left... if we are to sing the Moonsong again, we must send messengers to every corner of the Earth."

Ecco looked at Karkol, who looked back. "I don't want to turn into the Slayer," Karkol said at last.

"I don't want to disappear," Ecco agreed worriedly. "What do we do?"

The shark shook his head helplessly. "We haven't got a choice. We have to do this, or Earth dies."

"I know," Ecco answered. "I guess I just wanted to hear it from you. The killer whales made their sacrifice, and now we're being asked to make our own. I... guess it's fair."

"The Moonsong, then," Afarellan said gently.

Karkol turned towards him. "Yes," he answered with a slight effort. "We'll do it. Whatever needs to be done, we'll do it."

"How like your mother you are," the old dolphin said, and there was a strangely thoughtful look in his eyes as he said so. "Good luck to you both, then. The Moonsong must be performed at the time of the full moon, and we have only two days left. You must leave here as soon as possible in order to get to the Moonsong Stone in time." He swam slowly towards them. "I can give you the Powers you need now, but then you must hurry. There is another journey before you."

Ecco remained still as the old dolphin stretched out and gently touched him, on the forehead and then on the top of his head. A strange tingling went through him at the touch, a sensation that was not altogether pleasant. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the same prickling sensation in his chest, and suddenly had a very un-delphine urge to cough. The tingling spread right through his body, and he felt five sharp stinging pains on his forehead, where the star-markings lay. He hunched up in misery and waited for it to be over.

The sensations abated quite suddenly. Ecco opened his eyes a crack, then blinked swiftly, realizing that he didn't feel much different. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Karkol shaking himself dizzily. "That felt weird," the shark said, slightly nervous. Afarellan was waiting a length or so away, watching the both of them in silence.

Ecco slowly swam forward, aware now of a new heaviness in his chest. "Well," he said carefully, "I guess we're ready."

"Follow me then," Afarellan said, "and good luck to you. I will tell you more of what you must do while you swim with me."

The Moonsong Stone was, like Lunar Bay, a place sacred to the lone-swimmers. Legend had it that the Stone was where Tidesinger had first left the Earth on his quest to defeat the Foe--the sea bed had reached up after him, as if to call its champion back. The Stone was a high needle-like pinnacle that jutted up more than a hundred feet above the water, marking the very center of a wide coastal lagoon. That place was where the Song had first been performed, by Tidesinger alone if the legend held true.

"The lagoon is many miles south of here," Afarellan said, as he accompanied Ecco and Karkol through the still night-lit waters of the bay. "You must swim tirelessly if you are to reach it in time. We have spent nearly a day talking... you have two more to reach the Stone."

"We'll make it," Karkol said firmly. "We must've gone halfway across the ocean in the last couple of days. We'll get to the Stone in time, don't worry."

"I hope and pray that you do," Afarellan answered gravely. "-Ah, here comes Mallidith." The large white dolphin who had first challenged them was speeding through the water towards them, flinging himself clear of the waves in his hurry. Karkol growled softly, but Ecco shot him a glare and he subsided. Afarellan waited quietly for the other dolphin to reach them.

"Is it true, Leader?" Mallidith asked angrily, even before he had drawn to a halt before the old one. "You gave the Power to these two?" His eyes, pale and furious, swept over Ecco and Karkol. "They are outsiders!"

"They are the chosen ones," Afarellan said simply. "It must be so."

Mallidith's eyes flashed pale fire. The stars on his body gleamed hungrily under the strange moonlight of Lunar Bay. "It is not right!" he insisted wildly, glaring at Ecco as if he would have attacked him; Karkol moved a little closer to Ecco, indicating with his size that he was ready to defend him. Mallidith did not back down. "Afarellan, he is a half-breed! I should have been the one--"

"Mallidith!" Afarellan's voice, suddenly amplified to ten times its previous volume, actually pushed the angry lone-swimmer back in the water. "I know your feelings on the matter, and I know of your high pedigree! But Ecco is the chosen one! Can you deny his markings?"

"He is not one of us," Mallidith hissed hatefully, and turned away with a flick of his sooty black tail. "I care nothing for the spots on his bottle-nosed face." With that, he was gone into the blue like a bolt, leaving behind the bitter taste of his anger.

"Nice guy," Karkol remarked.

"He is angry," Afarellan said with a kind of sad simplicity. "Mallidith's family is a very old one--they claim that they can trace their ancestry all the way back to Tidesinger himself. He believes that he should be the one to oppose the Foe. But..." The old dolphin sighed a little. "He does not have the marks. He cannot be the chosen one."

"What marks?" Ecco asked, knowing in advance the answer.

"It was prophesied long ago," Afarellan explained, and poked his head out of the water to indicate the glittering stars which mirrored Ecco's own markings. "Delphinius sets his mark on the one he has chosen to defend his people. You are that chosen one, Ecco. Mallidith is angry because of that--when the Foe swam again, and you did not come, he dared to hope that you would not: that we would call upon him instead." Afarellan sighed heavily. "I am sorry for him. Jealousy is a hard burden."

They had progressed all the way to the wall. Ecco looked up and saw the shimmering barrier standing before him. He could hear the Foe, faintly, and he looked at Afarellan with sudden worry in his eyes; Karkol did the same. "What about--" the shark began nervously.

"The Foe cannot find their way here," Afarellan said, "for the moment. We knew that the Foe would be on your trail, and so Naylle has taken some of the singers into the reef from whence you came. They are weaving enchantments to baffle and ensnare the Foe. It will take them fully two days to find their way out--and when they do, it will be too late for them to catch you up."

"Thank you," Ecco said softly.

"Good luck to you." Afarellan smiled a little. "Ecco, I have faith in you, even if Mallidith does not. I can see, as he cannot, that you are truly the one. And Karkol... you swim in your mother's trail, my friend."

"Why doesn't that comfort me," Karkol said flatly.

"Do not misjudge the Slayer, my friend," Afarellan answered, unfazed by the shark's harsh tone. "She too rose to defend Earth in her time. Though she may well seem cold and cruel to you now, I know that there is good deep inside her still. And blood will out in the end... blood will out." He paused, looking up at the moon which hung like a silver lantern in the sky. "I have not told you the legend of Lunar Bay, my friends. This sky of ours is an enchantment wrought long ago... it is the sky that appeared here on the night Tidesinger sang down the moon, preserved for all eternity above our waters. Whenever we look up at it we remember his sacrifice, and we mourn, and we love."

Such devotion, Ecco thought, to a dolphin so long dead. It made him sad. "We should go," he said quietly to Karkol, who nodded and swam forward towards the wall. Ecco paused, looking back at Afarellan. Above their heads, hundreds of great white birds sprang from the cliffs and circled with cupped wings before sliding off into the sky. The air was filled with their lonely cries.

"Go, swiftly!" Afarellan said. "The messengers are already leaving, summoning the singers of the world to the Moonsong Stone. You have two days left--use them wisely!" 


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

The otherworldly starry sky of Lunar Bay blurred into the late evening of the real world as Ecco and Karkol passed back through the illusory wall. Ecco was more or less comfortable with the idea of a wall that wasn't-really-there now, but all the same he felt very odd as he passed right through the rock. Karkol wasn't so confident--the shark came through with his eyes tight closed and his fins drawn in, and Ecco had to nudge him to tell him to stop swimming.

The Foe were out on the reef somewhere, and by the baffled sounds of their screeching they were having plenty of trouble finding their way through the enchantments. Ecco wondered what sort of snares the lone-swimmers had laid for them--if the rock wall was any example, it would be pretty impressive. He thought of mazes of stone, of the Undercaves, of illusory sharks with teeth that were real until you disbelieved.

"They will take days to escape from here without a guide," Afarellan said, appearing soundlessly beside them. "You are safe enough. Swim south from here, following the coastline. If you run into any more Foe, Ecco, use your Power--you should learn to use it swiftly."

Ecco blinked. "How do I, uh..?"

"The Power of Song allows you to command," Afarellan explained. "Simply call the Foe to stop, and they will--they cannot help obeying, though they will fight it. Attack swiftly while they are stunned. That is how Tidesinger did it, long ago." The old dolphin rose, breathed and then came back down again. Ecco realized that he hadn't breathed himself for twenty minutes or so, and that he simply didn't feel as if he needed to.

"Come on," Karkol said quietly. "Like he said, we need to get going. The sun's nearly set."

"Right." Ecco swam forward, taking up his place beside the shark. He turned doubtfully. "Afarellan... we'll see you again, won't we?"

"Perhaps," the old dolphin said, and then sighed. "I am old, Ecco. I waited for you because I knew I had to. I needed to tell you so many things, about your father, and the lone-swimmers, and your heritage. Now there is no time for all of that. But, if you return, I think I shall be here waiting for a little longer."

Ecco just nodded, not too comfortable about the 'if' in that statement. Afarellan favored him with a long, appraising look, and then turned away without a word. They watched silently as the old one swam away and disappeared back through the rock wall--returning to the hidden Lunar Bay.

"Hi-ho, we're off again," Karkol sighed.

"Never mind, just think how fit we'll be after all of this," Ecco answered with a grin. "What did Afarellan say, south?" He began to swim slowly forward, down the coastline. Karkol kept pace with him. The sun was almost gone now, a spark low in the water from whence they had come. They swam fast by mutual consent, both feeling an urge to cover as much distance as they could. Ecco found it strange to swim without surfacing constantly for air--several times he did it automatically before realizing that he didn't actually need to breathe.

When the moon rose, it was a great globe of silver, nearly complete save for a slight flattening of one side. The sight of it did nothing to quell the unease in Ecco's heart--its light was only another reminder of how little time they had left. There would be one more moonrise after this, and then it would be time for the song--whether they were ready or not. They still had a lot of distance to cover. He thought of the great white albatrosses winging their way to every corner of the globe, and wondered how the birds could possibly spread their message far enough in time.

Yet, there was not a sound in the water around them--at least, not a sound of Foe. The natural sounds of the coastline were all around them--soft splashing as schools of small fish leaped from the surface, the cries of seabirds, even once or twice the singing of dolphins. Ecco thought for a moment about tiger sharks, and then he glanced at the big gray shape swimming strongly by his side and grinned to himself. Who was he kidding? There wasn't much sense in being afraid of a tiger shark when you were swimming with a great white... Ecco grinned again, deciding to remember that saying.

They swam on under the moon, comfortable together in silence. Above them the sky turned slowly, and the five stars of Delphinius glittered like the moonlit stars on Ecco's head. The dolphins were no longer anywhere to be heard. A stillness seemed to be creeping over the waters... a stillness caused not by Foe but by a simple absence of sound. They saw fish, many of them, gazing at them as they passed from round moon-silvery eyes, but nobody spoke.

Ecco began to dream again, in fleeting images.

A dusk-and-white body slips through midnight waters, stars gleaming on its sides. An eye, pale blue like the winter sky, gleams in the sooty black. It searches...

Black shapes fade out of the water all around. Silent for the moment, jaws open in anticipation, moonlight flashes off insectoid chitinous armor plating. The white one stops, and sings a single pure, wild note... a note of greeting.

The dark ones pause...

The white one sings again. And the tone is changed... no more is it pure and beautiful, but fell and terrible. A song of hate, a song of blood. A song of death. The dark ones advance...

The white one turns and begins to swim off, sliding through the dark waters. All around it the dark ones cluster like a guard of honor. Shadows cross over them all like bars. Far above, the moon slips behind clouds of velvet blackness. The stars on the body of the white one flicker and go out, and it is a pale ghost, a death-dolphin, guiding the Foe...

It sings again, and the Foe join in, weaving their screeching alien voices around its own in a hideous lullaby of joy and death...

Ecco jerked into wakefulness, his heart pounding. Syuuii! What had that been? He had never had a dream like that--never! He could feel his entire body tingling with the aftermath of the horror. Glancing sideways he saw that Karkol was watching him, but the shark said nothing. He attempted a shaky laugh. "Just a dream... I guess I dozed off there."

"I dream sometimes," Karkol said carefully. "Looked like you were having a bad one..."

He sighed. "It wasn't anything really. Never mind." Suddenly remembering the last time he had dreamed of Foe, Ecco became very alert and listened hard--there was no sound of them in the water, and certainly no sound of that dreadful choir. He shivered at the very thought of it--the way the dolphin's sweet voice had mingled so readily with the wailing of the Foe. Ecco glanced up at the moon, seeing that it was slowly setting--the night was half over by now. He swam on without saying anything more, wanting to make more headway against the distance they still had to travel.

It was amazing how time seemed to kaleidoscope in on itself, as if hours and minutes had no meaning any more. Ecco and Karkol swam on silently, exchanging only a few words, and above them the moon set and the sun rose, inscribed an arc across the sky and then set itself to make way for the great pale moon. It waited for them in the southern sky, huge and immense, a perfect globe of frozen silver with just one tiny fragment chipped from the right hand side. The moon hung there in the darkness for a while, above their tireless bodies, and then began to slide down the slope of the sky towards the waves again. And then, one last time, it was the turn of the sun.

The morning of their final day dawned unlike any other Ecco had seen. It was calm--perfectly so--and there was barely a ripple to move the still surface of the water. It was unnerving, swimming through that. Ecco felt as if he were in the eye of a hurricane and that this was only the calm before the storm. He could sense that Karkol was uneasy too, from the way in which the big fish moved: pectoral fins stiffly downward, head up, back arched. Karkol's eyes were active, glancing this way and that as if he expected to be rushed any moment. Yet nothing moved, and there was no sound. There was a dead quality to the air, a sensation as if the head was muffled and packed full of seaweed. As if, somewhere far off, perhaps very deep down, something unimaginably vast and terrible was beginning, very slowly, to move.

The sea rolled out before them, carrying them ever south, towards the stone that would be their goal.

Presently Karkol glanced sideways and said simply, "Water's bad."

It was the first thing he had said in many miles, and Ecco favored him with a surprised look before opening his mouth and testing it himself. There was a coppery, indefinable taste in the water that mirrored the strange metallic tint to the sky--it was not something Ecco could immediately pin down. He whistled softly in irritation.

"I can sense it, Karkol, but I don't understand it. It's like..." He took another hesitant taste of that feeling, more of an intuition than a sensation, and shuddered suddenly as the full force of it hit him. "Syuuii! It's something bad, but I don't know what!"

"Death," Karkol said, in an odd flat tone. Ecco stared at him, but the shark's eyes were fixed on some distant point which he could not see himself. Karkol swam on automatic. "There's death ahead of us for somebody. I can feel it in the water." His voice was a low monotone, devoid of feeling.

"You think--you think the Foe know?" Ecco trembled.

Karkol blinked, and looked at him again--the strange distance in his eyes seemed to fade away, and he was Karkol once more. "What? Oh... no. No, I don't. They're far behind us, Ecco. The singers will have seen to that." The shark attempted a grin, which didn't get much further than the corners of his mouth. "I guess we're safe enough for now." The distance stole back into his eyes for a moment. "I just wish... I wish I knew..."

"Knew what?" Ecco asked, rising automatically to breathe before remembering. He came back down and swam at the shark's side.

Karkol closed his eyes for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "That's the problem. It's something we sharks have in common--we can sense things a long way off. I don't know why, but there's something bad ahead of us. Maybe at the Stone. I don't know." With that, he lapsed into silence and wouldn't speak further even when Ecco pushed him to.

They swam on. Above their heads, for a short while, one of the great white birds circled. It called out to them once in a sad, eerie voice, and then swept off across the still waters and headed west towards land. Whatever the message was, it passed them both by. Ecco poked his head out of the water to watch the albatross go, conscious that the little ripples caused by his small snout were the only ones on the surface of the water for many miles. He was glad that he didn't need to breathe--the air felt funny, almost oily on his body.

Nothing moved all day, save for them themselves. They saw few living things, though they managed to make some sort of midday meal on a small school of sardines. The few large creatures that did seem to be about never spoke to them. There was an undercurrent of fear in the water, that seemed to be carried on that strange metallic taste. Once they saw a tiger shark which was larger than Karkol--the predator just cast them a haunted glance and swept away into the open sea. Ecco remembered what Castor had said so long ago about whispering in the deeps. Now there was whispering even at the surface. The storm was about to break. Above them, clouds began to gather and the sun faded from view.

At last, in the late afternoon of that day, they reached a place where the water grew shallow. The sun was invisible by now behind thick black clouds, and at last there was a wind to ruffle the surface of the sea. Occasionally heat lightning flickered far up in the heavens, momentarily illuminating the water that had grown dark around them. Fine mist hung on the surface of the waves, an odd gray color, like smoke.

"I've never seen weather like this before," Ecco muttered to Karkol.

"Me neither," the shark admitted, glancing at him for a moment. "It's creepy."

Ecco paused for a moment, trying to think. The odd pressure in his head seemed to stifle the thoughts before they could become fully formed. "Karkol--" he began, having some unclear idea to tell the shark about his dream, but then Karkol swept ahead of him with a triumphant cry.

"Ecco, look! Look! The Moonsong Stone! We made it!"

Eyes widening, Ecco chased after the shark. Karkol dashed to the surface and spyhopped, sticking his head out of the water to take a better look through the clearer air--he had to struggle to clear the mist, which lay several inches above the surface. Ecco followed suit, tailwalking to get a good look for himself.

Less than a mile away, a high pinnacle of stone protruded from the water like a spear, reaching over a hundred feet into the sky. A shaft of stray sunlight gleamed on the stone, lighting it up brighter than the darkened air around it. The narrow entrance to the lagoon was just ahead.

"Let's go!" Ecco yelled, surging forward and even throwing one or two jumps and barrel rolls in his excitement. Karkol followed with, for the first time in many days, a big grin on his face. Together the dolphin and the shark swept through the opening, side by side, and then they were into the lagoon itself. The sun was nearly set--the moon was about to rise.

They swam right to the base of the Stone itself. There was a sense of ancient peace in this place that not even the terror of the Foe had penetrated. Ecco looked around, wondering where the others were--who was going to sing the song? Carefully he let out a few brief notes, letting the music shiver through the water--a message to whoever was listening that Ecco was there and waiting. Karkol glanced at him, and grinned.

There was silence for a long moment, and Ecco got to the stage of opening his mouth to say, "Maybe we're early--" when from a distance away the song was answered. The high whistle of another dolphin fluted thinly to them, a greeting call. Ecco frowned slightly--there was an odd twist to it that, somehow, didn't seem right.

A pale shape coasted towards them through the water that was now becoming choppy. Ecco sighed as he recognized the by-now familiar visage of Mallidith, and then he blinked, wondering what the dusky dolphin was doing here in the first place. "Mallidith?" he asked softly as the other dolphin came towards them. "Aren't you supposed to be back in Lunar Bay?"

The white dolphin's pale blue eyes were cool, and he wouldn't look at them head on. "Afarellan sent me after you," he said carefully. "I am to deliver a message." A flash of heat lightning far above them lit Mallidith's body bright white for a moment, and sent sparks into the odd blue eyes.

"Well, what is it?" Karkol asked, barely keeping the scorn out of his voice. He strongly disliked the white dolphin.

Mallidith's pale gaze flickered towards Karkol for a moment, then flickered away again as he dismissed the big shark as something of no consequence. "Ecco," he said quietly, and now there was a tone of menace in his voice. "Leave this place."

"What?" Ecco stared, his mouth falling open. "You can't be serious!"

"I've never been more serious." Mallidith's eyes were hot now. He seemed to be keeping his body under very tight control, as if he would rush them any minute. "Go away. Leave the Stone. Find a place to hide. The descendants of Tidesinger will deal with this in our own way."

Ecco and Karkol exchanged astonished looks. "I can't believe this," the shark said after a moment. "What are you, crazy? Afarellan didn't say anything of the sort! Ecco's the only one who can defeat the Foe! The marks proved it!"

"We're not leaving," Ecco added firmly, sounding as fierce as he could. "We don't have time for this, Mallidith."

"Then you leave me no choice," Mallidith answered softly. Without turning away from them, the white dolphin let out one long, low note, a soft summons.

Heat lightning flashed once more, high above... and illuminated dark shapes fading into sight all around them. The Foe were silent, watching, waiting. They surrounded the stone and the three swimmers without a sound. Lightning glittered on shimmering black carapaces and on the pale teeth in the eyeless jaws. Hundreds of them...

Ecco felt a slow, chilly hatred begin to spread through his body. "You sold us out," he whispered. "You went over to them."

"Yes," Mallidith said softly. The Foe began to close in around them. "I guided them through the reef. I took them down to the Moonsong Stone, following your trail. We were close behind you all the time. We had you in sight. And you never looked back." The white dolphin's pale eyes glowed bright with hatred. "We made a deal, Ecco. I give the Foe what they want, they give me what I want. Power, Ecco. They'll make me truly powerful. This world will be under their sway, and I... I will be its overlord. I will serve the Foe!" His voice rose to a scream at the last, high and thin and tearing.

"You're mad," Karkol said, struggling to get the words out. He stared at the dolphin with wide black eyes. "Carcharodon's teeth, you're mad!"

"Perhaps," Mallidith whispered, smiling terribly. "But tell me, murderer--who is the more mad? I gave you a chance to run. You didn't take it. Now the Foe... will take you." He began to laugh. It was a terrible sound, high and lonely. In that moment Ecco understood Mallidith more clearly than he had ever done. The white dolphin knew fully what he was doing--knew that he was condemning himself to a terrible, lonely death among the Foe. He wasn't mad--he was perfectly sane.

And that was the most frightening thing of all.

Mallidith backfinned gracefully as the Foe closed in, and they parted to let him through. Karkol growled deeply, preparing to fight.

Ecco tensed.

The Foe rushed them.

With all the power in his small body, and all the determination in his heart, Ecco screamed out one word.

"Stop!"

The monsters froze dead, for just that one moment--but it was enough. Karkol roared and exploded into action. His jaws came down on one Foe, crushing its body--without even waiting for it to expire the shark turned on another, and then another--taking huge terrible bites, bites intended to cripple and maim. Shouting out in rage, Ecco charged them himself, and felt his hard snout ram into one body. Acrid blood flooded the water--he struggled through it, having no thought in his head but that of reaching the treacherous Mallidith. But there were too many of them--far too many. A Foe claw tore into Ecco's side, and he screamed in pain as two more of them fastened their jaws into his body. His own blood, bright crimson, clouded his sight. Outside the circle of writhing Foe bodies, Mallidith was laughing--his high, mocking tones easily penetrated the shrieking of the Foe.

It's all over, Ecco thought dully as the pain began to slip away.

Then a giant, pale shape appeared through the water, sliding gracefully into the shadow of the Stone upon outstretched pectoral fins. Karkol, mortally injured, was pushed casually to one side as the huge jaws closed delicately on two Foe at once.

The Foe relinquished Ecco and backed off, then fled from the sight of the monster shark. Mallidith made to fly in another direction, but Foe jaws snapped at his tail and pulled him back. With a terrible wail, the white dolphin fled alongside the Foe, gleaming like a pale ghost in the blood-tinged water. He faded away into the night.

Barely conscious, Ecco turned towards their rescuer, and froze. A giant white bulk hung in the water before him, surrounded by pieces of animal matter that once had been Foe.

"We meet again, Ecco," the Slayer said softly, and heat lightning flickered in her flat black eyes.

Ecco would have said something, but his eyes were closing despite everything he could do. The water around him was filled with blood, much of it his own. He whimpered softly, feeling as if he were drowning, and let the darkness close slowly over his head. 


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Consciousness returned slowly, and for a long while Ecco wasn't sure where he was or what he had been doing--only that there was a dull ache in his side, and a sharp stinging pain upon his back. Delphine voices sang softly to him, a song of peace and sleep. He opened his eyes for a moment, saw nothing, and returned to the world of darkness and silence.

He was brought round a second time by the awareness that somebody was touching him, gently supporting him in the water. The pain in his body had faded, but it was still there at the back of his mind, not yet willing to let him go. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked into the beautiful dark orbs of Naylle.

"Who... how..." Ecco couldn't manage to get the rest of his question out. He closed his eyes again and just lay there, feeling exhausted. Sounds were starting to fight for his awareness now--the sounds of dolphins, many dolphins, and whales as well. And in the background, the shrieking of the Foe, and a strange rushing, snarling, worrying noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

"How are you feeling?" Naylle asked softly, her voice calm and perfect like a finely tuned musical instrument.

"I..." He shook himself and started swimming with a convulsive jerk. The two dolphins who had been holding him up turned and moved off, away from the Stone. Ecco surfaced, remembered he didn't need air, and sank back down. Above them the moon was rising slowly in the south-eastern sky, full and round. The full moon... the time had come. Ecco blinked slowly, trying to understand. "The Foe..." He turned and faced Naylle, who waited silently for him to speak. Her white body glittered faintly with reflected moonlight, showing shimmering points of light on her sides. For a moment he was reminded of Mallidith, and he shivered despite himself, but Naylle's dark eyes were not like Mallidith's pale ones. Ecco shook himself again, remembering the terrible scene between him and the white dolphin, and spoke. "Karkol--"

"He will live," she said gently, seeing his distress. "He was badly injured, like you, but we came just in time to save you. We have been hard at work upon you both, singing songs of healing. You will need all the strength we can give you in the next few hours."

"The Moonsong..." Ecco breathed, then blinked. "The Slayer! Naylle, she chased off the Foe! Where's Greshruk? How did she come to be here in the first place?"

Naylle was smiling. "I think there is one here who can answer that better than I," she said, and made way for a small, bobbing light that made its way towards him, flanked by two porpoises.

"Chang!" Ecco squealed.

The angler-fish laughed at his surprise, and bobbed right up to him. Her fat little body trembled with delight at being reunited with him. "Hi, Ecco!" she cried joyfully. "Oh, there's so much to tell you!"

"The Slayer?" he prompted, then stared at her in utter shock. "No... you wouldn't have... You couldn't have!"

Naylle nodded gravely. "Word came up from the deep-down about the Foe massing in the north. Little Chang took it upon herself to carry the message to Greshruk, and told her that the Foe planned to stop the Song being performed. It is thanks to her that the sharks are here to defend us."

"The sharks?" Ecco repeated, knowing that he was being stupid.

"The Foe are outside the lagoon." Naylle lowered her head, and her paleness became more so. "I am so sorry, Ecco... the reason the Foe were here, waiting for you... it pains me to admit it, but one of our number turned traitor."

"Mallidith," Ecco said. "I know."

She looked at him in shock. "Mallidith? You knew--you saw him?" A whole gamut of expressions passed through her deep black eyes, starting with surprise and ending in grief. "Then... I am sorry for him also. He was to be leader after Afarellan. But, Ecco, do you know why he could have done this terrible thing?"

"I know why he did. I don't know why he could." Ecco sighed. "I'm sorry too. What will happen to him now?"

"We do not know," Naylle said softly. "Nobody has seen him." A spark kindled in her eyes as she went on, "But he will never come back to Lunar Bay, Ecco. There can be only one punishment for such treachery--banishment. No singer will speak his name, no creature of the water, land or air will exchange words with the one who would have given the world away."

Ecco dropped his head.

The white dolphin whistled softly, making an effort to pull herself out of the gloom into which they had both fallen. "Ecco," she said firmly, "now is not the time. We will grieve later. But now we have to prepare ourselves for the Song--and we have little enough time as it is. The Foe are massed outside the lagoon, and only the bravery of the Slayer and her people prevent them from storming the Stone itself. Are you still prepared to do this?"

"Yes," he said, steeling himself, and then asked, "What about Karkol?"

She nodded. "We have done the best we could, in the time. Follow me, Ecco, and I will take you to him."

The vibrations of battle filtered through the water as Ecco followed Naylle across the lagoon. That rushing, tearing noise that had woken him was the sound made by thousands of sharks as they fought and rolled, killing and being killed. Ecco remembered Karkol's funny turn that morning, and how the young shark had spoken dreamily about death in the water. "Naylle?" he asked, and the white dolphin glanced back at him. "The Slayer--she's fighting for us? I thought sharks didn't gather together, but I can hear... Delphinius, you know what I can hear!"

Naylle nodded slowly. "It is true, sharks do not come together--save when the Slayer calls. She has gathered every finned one for thousands of miles to her standard. At the moment, her people are the only thing standing between us and destruction. I do not know how much longer they can last, so we must hurry. The moon is nearly full..."

Karkol was lying on his belly in the shallow water, flat out on the sand with his eyes closed. Two dusky dolphins stood guard over the big shark; they bowed respectfully as Naylle approached, and backed away. For one horrible moment, seeing Karkol so still, Ecco thought that he was dead--a great white shark never stopped swimming--but then he remembered that Karkol had the Power of Air and no longer needed to keep moving. Slowly he approached, seeing the pale and sunken marks of what had been horrific wounds on the body of his friend.

"Did you... heal... him?" he asked hesitantly, looking back at Naylle.

"We did," she answered gravely. "In the same way we healed you, Ecco--we still have a little of the old magic. We struggled with him a little--delphine healing does not easily work on those not of our kind--but eventually we won through. Look, he wakes..."

Karkol's muscles trembled, and slowly the shark opened his eyes. He looked up, a little confused to find himself stationary, and then saw the dolphins gathered around him. "Huh..?" he said dizzily. "Ecco?.."

"It's me," he agreed, relieved almost beyond words to see the shark alive. "You okay, big guy?"

Karkol pushed off the sand and started to swim, a little jerkily. Ecco fell in beside him, and Naylle stayed with them a little way off. "I'm okay," the shark said after a moment. "Bit stiff. What the heck happened back there?"

Ecco laughed. "The Slayer, Karkol--she came and saved us! She brought all the sharks to fight, too!"

"Not only sharks, my friend..." The fluting tones of another familiar voice sped through the water to them, heralding the approach of a familiar face. The black-and-white body of a killer whale appeared out of the murk. There were cuts and slashes all over Khorik's body, but he was grinning wider than the Slayer even could at their shock and surprise. "How is it with you, hunt-brothers? I knew we would meet again!"

"I don't believe it!" Karkol yelled. "You--you got away?"

"Not only myself, but my mate and my two calves." Khorik's brown eyes twinkled brightly. "We grieve for our hunt-brothers and hunt-sisters who perished, but we know that they gave their lives for something they believed in--and in the eyes of Delphinius, is that not living?" The whale backfinned a little, and bowed. "We have come to lend our voices to the song, my friends. Not for all the world would we miss this fight!"

"This is more than I ever hoped for," Ecco said, hardly able to get the words out. "Khorik--I'm so glad you're alive. And the calves, too! We both thought... well, you know."

"'Tis but a scratch," the whale said with a grin, though his black-and-white hide was riddled with barely closed scars. "Well, hunt-brothers, we must take our leave and our places in the circle! The whole world will be joining in this song!"

And with that, Khorik swept away into the misty water. The moon shone above, nearly at its zenith, a great round ball of white light.

"Come," Naylle said, moving forward, "back to the Stone. Everybody is waiting now; we are nearly ready."

"Who's singing?" Ecco asked curiously, hurrying to catch up with the white dolphin. Karkol swam at his side, already losing some of the stiffness that had slowed his usual grace.

"Almost everyone," Naylle said, not looking back. "The birds flew faster than we could have hoped, Ecco--the word ran across the waters like a lightning bolt. We have the blue whales down from the far north, the killers, the humpbacks... many hundreds of dolphins, even those who had never before ventured out of the estuaries where they lived. We even have word that our cousins on land, from whom we have been sundered many millions of years, are going to lend their voices to the song."

As they swam into the lee of the Stone, Ecco saw what she had meant. The moonlit water of the lagoon was filled with dark shapes--he had to use his sonar to click a path through all the warm bodies. Voices of all kinds sounded softly in the water--pilots, humpbacks, right whales, fin whales, minke whales, common dolphins, sawtooth dolphins, bottlenoses and white dusky dolphins, porpoises... and fish, millions of fish! After the isolated waters through which they had traveled, this teeming multitude was a shock to the system. Ecco felt buffeted by sound, and everybody seemed to be turning to look, saying his name... He was sure that he caught sight of Castor's familiar face in the midst of a group of sperm whales, and that the great one smiled at him.

They stopped at the base of the Stone itself--Ecco and Karkol waited as Naylle spoke softly and questioningly to a great dark shape, shaping her high delphine voice around the mellow vowels of whalesong. In a few moments the whale answered, in a cacophony of stunningly beautiful sound. The white dolphin responded swiftly then turned back to where Ecco and Karkol were. "This is Talobrenderiel," she said, working carefully around the long and ornate name. "She is young, but the best singer among the humpback kind. She and her cousin Wylalaeraen will be leading the Moonsong."

Ecco bowed his forequarters respectfully as the humpback came towards them. "I'm honored to make your acquaintance, Talobren...brenderiel." He stuttered on the name, and flushed in embarrassment. "Pardon me... your name is very difficult for me..."

The whale buzzed out laughter that tickled his skin. "I understand," she said in a voice like melting honey. "If you like, you may call me Bren. And my cousin's shorter name among your kind is Wil." Ecco smiled gratefully, thankful for the overture.

"It's good of you to come all this way," Karkol said, looking up at the whale. "I mean, you must've come hundreds of miles. You're from the deep south, aren't you? I recognized the accent."

"I am," Bren agreed. "It was a long way, but we are used to the traveling. We are grateful to be here and to participate in the song. We wish you good luck, friends."

"Thanks," Ecco answered softly, glancing at the shark. Karkol said nothing more, but looked at Bren with a curious expression in his dark black eyes. Above them, the moon was within a few degrees of midnight.

Suddenly there was a flurry of movement among the whales--giant bodies moved with nervous swiftness, ducking and diving out of the way. A great pale bulk slid silently through the water towards the Stone, moonlight gleaming off its back. Ecco backfinned nervously, seeing the Slayer approach, but Greshruk merely looked at him for a long moment. She was covered in wounds--great deep gashes across her head and back, some still oozing red--but she seemed almost unaffected by her injuries. She was so huge that the Foe had not been able to cause any serious damage yet, although they were obviously working on it. "Well met, small fry," she said in her low, hissing voice, and many of the nearest whales drew away a little more.

"Greshruk," Ecco said carefully. "Thanks for coming, even after what happened."

She nodded slowly, her jaws working. "It seems I'll have to put off my plans regarding you for a little while yet."

"I'm grateful," he said sincerely.

Greshruk's black eyes switched to Karkol, who watched her with a kind of frightened fascination. "I know you, flesh of my flesh," the Slayer said slowly. "I never thought to see a child of mine swimming with one of Tidesinger's whelps... well, well. I charge you--keep him safe until he has done what he needs to do."

"I'll do my best," Karkol said stoutly, gaining heart from the Slayer's neutral tone.

"Hm." She looked at him, then back at Ecco. "Well, this will be a night to remember..."

There was another commotion from the whales--voices were raised. Flashing in the moonlight, a slender blue shark slipped between them and dashed up to Greshruk. She turned, jaws agape as if she would snap up the graceful pelagic hunter, but it darted quickly out of the way. "Slayer... swiftly... breaking through..." the shark gasped out, then turned tail and dashed back out of the shadow of the Stone, towards the entrance of the lagoon.

"I must go," Greshruk said, turning ponderously. She cast one eye back towards them. "There will be good eating indeed for me and mine this night." And with that parting shot the Slayer left the circle, a sharp-toothed goddess of death under the pale moon. The whales rumbled nervously amongst themselves as she vanished into the darkness.

"Now," Naylle said quietly, swimming forward, "it is time. Thank you all for coming in such a dangerous time. I am sure you all know what is at stake here. We must sing the Moonsong once more, and allow Ecco and Karkol to ascend the moonstream and stop the Foe. The sharks are doing their best to hold them back underwater, and the air is guarded likewise by our winged allies. While we still have the time, let us sing from the depths of our heart." She paused. "Delphinius looks down upon us and our cousins all around the world. Let us make him proud of his children. Now, my friends--let us sing down the moon!"

"We're really dead this time," Karkol muttered. Ecco gave him a wry look and ascended towards the surface of the water. The Stone towered above them, but its shadow was barely there now--the moon was right above their heads, and the Stone was pointing directly towards it. Moonlight showered the entire lagoon, lighting everything up in pure silver.

The killers were the ones who started it. Their soft, rich voices sounded clear as a bell through the murky water that was now tossed by violent winds. Largest of the dolphinkind, the killers' song sounded of their fierce, joyful natures. In moments they were joined by the shrill singing of the dolphins and porpoises, and then by the slow majestic caroling of the great whales.

The winds began to slow, and then die away. Above, the clouds slipped away from the face of the moon and the silvery light brightened and grew stronger. Distinctly audible in the distance was the sound of the battle being fought between the Foe and the sharks.

Ecco and Karkol floated silent in the middle of it, too amazed and awed to speak. Every voice around them was lifted into song, not delphine and not the common patois known to every creature in the sea--this was the ancient rolling melody of true whalesong. The sound thundered inside their bodies, rocked the very water in which they swam.

Above their heads, the song was heard and taken up by the birds who circled and fought the aerial foe--the albatrosses, the gulls, the eagles who had come overland to fight for them. Their high, wild voices took it up and threw it across the high airs until it came to land itself, and was caught up in its turn by those who had waited there for it. The creatures of five continents lifted their muzzles to the great round moon and sang out in a million different voices their overpowering love for their world. 


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

The song swelled and grew, filling water and air alike with its power. Above, the moonlight was searingly bright, purest silver. Ecco felt a shiver run right through him, and a pricking in his forehead--by the pale radiance in front of him he knew that the stars on his head were glowing again under Tidesinger's moon. A few lengths away, Naylle and others of her pod were shining brightly with the reflected points of light. The song poured into the water around them, flooding Ecco and Karkol with sound. He glanced towards the shark and saw how Karkol's eyes were wide, frightened.

"Karkol... are you okay?" he asked. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the song, and it was a battle within himself to disturb it. He needn't have worried--nothing could have stopped that eerie music, that call from the hearts of the entire Earth.

"They're falling back," the shark said through his teeth. "Greshruk can't hold them, not even with all the sharks in the world. Ecco, we're losing..." The sound of battle was indeed coming closer, forcing its way through the outskirts of the Moonsong and introducing a note of discord to the music. The nearest sharks were visible now as they darted in and out of the roiling cloud of blood and pieces that was the slowly advancing line of the Foe.

"We can't lose now!" Ecco snarled.

There was a high, thin scream from the edge of the circle. One of the Foe had broken through and sunk its jaws into a porpoise. The little singer struggled for a moment and then went belly-up. A great white shadow fell over the Foe and it died a moment later in Greshruk's bloodstained jaws, but the Slayer's momentary absence allowed another through.

The song faltered, as Castor and the killers broke off. "Fight!" the sperm whale trumpeted. "Those with teeth to rend, protect the singers!" The circle of Foe was closing all around them--the earthborn were outnumbered now. A Foe plummeted into the water right beside Ecco and Karkol, and both squealed in alarm before realizing that it was dead--it twisted slowly down towards the sandy floor, deep gashes in its carapace from the talons of the birds who had killed it. There were feathers floating on the surface, now, along with bedraggled corpses and a red and oily film.

Ecco cast his gaze around, seeing the sharks now turning as one to face the Foe, creating a wall of bodies between the alien monsters and the singers. The water was misted with blood. He fluked swiftly to the surface and tailwalked, seeing a scene that could have come out of Hell itself. There was an orange light in the sky now, a light that came not from the sky but from the land--there was smoke on the water. Outside the circle, the sea bubbled and foamed with the battle. The sky was a melee of flying bodies--eagles and other birds, ludicrously smaller than the Foe, were nevertheless holding them back.

Clouds covered the entire sky, save for one patch right above them where the moon shone through brightly. There were no stars visible. The sound of the song was failing beneath a cacophony of cries and the shrieking of the Foe.

"Tidesinger," Ecco screamed, "help us now! Please!"

Whether it was that the echoes of the song finally reached the lofty heights where the moon lay, or whether Ecco's thin voice, and the passion in his heart, got through where all else had failed, it could not be said. But something happened. In the east, five bright lights began to shine, piercing through the black cloud cover and banishing the lightning. The symbol of Delphinius grew and grew, until it showered white light onto the Stone. And Ecco alone heard the softly singing voices from somewhere far above, and felt the stars on his head blaze out into a hot white mirror-light.

There was a soft rushing from the heavens above. The moonlight was pouring down in a concentrated beam, onto the spot at the base of the stone where Ecco and Karkol waited. All around them the water began to shiver and churn as if disturbed. The moonlight pushed down on them with an almost physical force--as if they were swimming underneath a waterfall...

A Foe charged towards them, screaming in rage. Two sharks broke from the circle, gave chase and dragged the alien beast down before they could react--it struggled, kicking and squealing and venting ichor, as it was forced slowly down to the sea floor. As if there was no such danger, Naylle appeared before them both in a moment more, blown their way in a billow of blood. The white dolphin's eyes were wild; the stars on her body shone as bright as Ecco's own. "Go!" she cried. "Quickly as you can! We cannot hold them back any longer!"

"We can't leave you!" Karkol yelled desperately.

It was Ecco who dashed in front of the shark. "We have to!" he shouted, blocking Karkol's way when the shark would have shoved past him. "Karkol, we have to go on! It's the only way we're ever going to win this war!"

"Go!" Naylle begged, tears starting to her eyes. More Foe approached, black in the bloodied water, and she turned to face the monsters, felling them with a blast of Battlesong. "For the love of Ocean, just go!" she screamed back at them both.

It was as if the water itself was burning with a pale silver fire. The moonlight cascaded down, was caught in the current, and pulled this way and that, flowing in streams between the struggling bodies of whales and Foe. Ecco and Karkol both struggled to reach the surface, the current pushing them downwards--it was an effort to push up to where the light hit the surface of the water, sending up curls of bright silvery steam. Delphinius's stars were fire in the east.

"We have to swim up that?" Karkol yelled through the rushing of the water.

"Let's not think about it!" Ecco shouted back. Below them, the Foe had broken through the lines at last. The fighters were falling back in no sort of order, save for the Slayer who cruised back and forth through the midst of the enemy, her jaws opening and closing like a vice. A trail of blood four feet wide stretched out behind Greshruk, and her eyes were rolled right back in her head as she shuddered in the ecstasy of the frenzy.

Karkol didn't make any more complaints. With a huge surge, the great white shark forced his body right out of the water in a gigantic leap that carried him eight feet or more. The Foe screamed towards the place where he had been. Ecco took one look and followed the shark's example, bursting free of the water and into the hot silver moonlight.

They didn't stop. To their mutual shock, they found themselves heading upwards further and further, swimming side by side, neither daring to stop or even slow down. Ecco was reminded momentarily of his entry into Atlantis--but in moments he was higher even than that. The sea fell away beneath him.

"I don't believe this!" Karkol yelled.

"Just keep going!"

The Foe met in a seething cloud of bodies where they had been. But the silver moonlight seared the bodies of the alien creatures so that they fled shrieking and smoking back into the darkness of the sea. And there Greshruk was waiting, blind and ravenous. Ecco and Karkol fluked higher and higher still, hearing the last ragged remnants of the song begin to fade away beneath the screams of battle. Around them now were not the struggling bodies of sharks and dolphins, but the soaring, screaming hosts of birds who fought the Foe in the air. The alien beasts were much larger than the feathered ones, but the birds were making up for this by sheer numbers. In one unbelieving glance Ecco saw more seabirds than he had ever seen in his life, and all kinds of land-birds from tiny songthrushes to the great golden eagles.

Everything was visible up here. The bay seemed smaller than a sprat from Ecco's bird's-eye view--he could see the bubbling, roiling circle of battle concentrated around the Moonsong Stone. Its outer edges were strewn with bodies and pieces of bodies, and the whole of the water had a reddish tinge to it. He could see Castor--the great sperm whale, and the even more gigantic blues, were about the only individuals he could pick out from this distance. Further out, across the land, Ecco saw that the orange glow stretched right across to the far horizon where he could see the curvature of the world. Race memory which went back more than thirty million years informed him: Fire. Fire on the land, and blood in the water.

"How will we ever survive this?" he moaned.

"Ecco!" Karkol shouted suddenly. "Look! Over there! I see something!"

Out in the deep ocean, there was a commotion in the storm-tossed waters--they were pouring out of the way, as if something unimaginably gigantic was forcing its way up from below. Ecco and Karkol stopped, over five thousand feet up, and stared as the thing broke out, water cascading off its circular sides. Slick as an insect, it was a circular disk of the same black insectoid material as the Foe itself. It rose slowly into the air where it blotted out the very stars, and then began to move upwards and in their direction, gathering speed.

"That's the Foe ship!" Ecco yelled. "It has to be! It's huge!"

Something was happening all around them--the moonlight was fading. The song had finally failed, and now its power was bleeding away again. They were starting to feel gravity, pulling them down towards the water that was full of death. "Swim!" Karkol bellowed, forging ahead. "Fast as you can! We have to get higher!"

The Foe ship moved slowly towards them, inexorable as the tide. It was going to pass right through the flickering moonstream, if they could only reach it in time...

The dry plains burned with terrible swiftness, the grass roaring into flame and driving the animals back. The Foe attacked swiftly and mercilessly, forcing the desperate earthborn back further and further until they were nearly to the sea. A pride of lions, fierce and frightened, were pushed right onto a peninsula and fought on with their backs to the water and their faces to the flame.

Fire burst in the pine trees, and the wolves ran through the snow, kicking up great drifts of the powdery stuff. They could not outrun the Foe, however, and the pack soon found themselves facing five of the monstrous creatures.

A great male wolf snarled as the Foe advanced, every hair on his body standing up on end. His mate joined him, and the two stood side by side, defying the advancing monsters with their last breath.

The horses shivered in terror on the heights, as the fire ripped through the rich grazing lands below from whence they had run. It did not take long for their meager refuge to be found, however, and the Foe raced up the hill towards them. Bravely mares and stallions stood together, forming a ring with their vulnerable young in the center. As the Foe dashed towards them with jaws agape, the brave ones reared and lashed out with razor-sharp hooves, caring nothing in their desperation for the greater numbers of their enemy.

The ship was rising fast now--Ecco and Karkol only had ten more seconds or so to achieve the right distance, and the song was fading all around them. It was an effort to get anywhere now. Below them the world was nothing more than a toy, a great mist-shrouded ball. They were above the cloud cover, forcing their way up the shaft of moonlight. Ecco had no idea how far up they were, but he could feel the freezing coldness of the air on his chilled skin, and the dryness of it actually hurt him. Above them the stars shone cold and pale in a sky of velvety blackness; in front of them the moon was dazzlingly bright and shockingly close, filling their entire field of vision.

A feathered form circled close to them for a moment--a bright golden eye fixed upon them. The eagles had been keeping as near to them as they could, driving off the airborne Foe who would have charged the moonstream and risked the burning. Now, though, they had all fallen back save this one, one of the largest males.

"Thanks!" Ecco shouted to the fiercely flapping bird. He had no strength to say any more than that.

The eagle nodded, then faltered in its flight as the thinning air refused to let it struggle upwards any more. "I can go no further!" it shouted back in a shrill, keening voice, and began to spiral downwards towards the clouds. "Good luck to you, earth-friends!"

"We're not going to make it!" Karkol yelled.

"Yes we are!" Ecco glanced to his left, saw the ship coming. "Harder, Karkol, harder!" It felt as if there was barely anything to push against now, and they could hardly tell even whether they were still moving--they had no reference points now save the moon and the far-off stars.

"The ship's going to cut us off!"

The edge of the alien ship slipped into the moonstream, and a shadow crossed the face of the moon itself. Moonlight poured over the sides of the Foe ship like water, glittering on the blank black carapace. Ecco increased his efforts, pumping his tail as hard as he could--Karkol steamed up beside him, struggling to maintain his position. Slowly the ship moved across their field of view, cutting off more and more of the moonstream. Ecco's eyes scanned its underside, searching for something--anything--that would allow them entry. He found it.

"Karkol, the hatch! Do you see it?"

"I see it!" the shark bellowed back. "Let's go!" He surged ahead into a charge, jaws opening and eyes rolling back. The tail scissored back and forth before Ecco's eyes--he went flat out himself to try and catch up with the shark. A Foe drone flashed by them and fell awkwardly, struggling to maneuver in the too-thin air.

Karkol smashed into the hatch with all his power, bending the metal grille right upwards. There were popping, snapping sounds as rivets broke and the mesh creaked and snapped. But it didn't go all the way. The shark flailed in the air as the moonstream faltered, and Ecco realized that in a moment they would both fall--all the way down. He charged forward like an arrow from a bow, and rammed snout-first into the hatch beside the shark.

There was a slam, and a rending shriek of metal. The hatch burst and swung inwards, opening a hole that was as dark as the deepest waters. Liquid poured out, like water except strangely more viscous. The last of the moonstream's support flickered and faded right away as the ship passed right overhead, cutting it off completely. Their upward momentum carried them on through the hole, side by side... into the lair of the Foe. A flicker ran across the surface of the ship and, as if it were organic, it sealed itself--a new grille grew across the old one, stopping the leakage of material.

It was suddenly surprisingly quiet, save for a low mechanical hum from somewhere.

Ecco and Karkol were silent, trying weakly to regain their senses and find out which way was up. They were together in a wide corridor that was made of the same stuff as the Foe's own bodies--that black, insectile chitin. Ropes and tubes of it criss-crossed the passageway like conduits, making it seem as if they were inside the body of some gigantic beast. A very ill beast, if the dark cobwebby color of their surroundings was any hint. Diffuse light came from glowing globes set into the walls at odd intervals, corresponding to some strange alien idea of symmetry. There was a certain hideous resemblance between this and the ordered beauty of Atlantis.

"We made it," Karkol said at last, after a long moment. "Son of a..." He growled softly to himself.

"The way out's blocked," Ecco said, glancing down at the hatch. He paused. "The moonstream's closed too, Karkol... there's no way back for us."

"I know," the shark said quietly. He turned and looked at Ecco with serious black eyes. "And so did you, before we even started this. We're not gonna get out of this alive, Ecco... no way."

Ecco bowed his head.

Karkol turned and began to swim slowly, along the corridor. "But," he said, glancing back, "maybe we can save a hell of a lot more people than ourselves. C'mon, Ecco. Let's go look for a way to waste this place."

A slow, evil smile spread across the dolphin's face as he contemplated the destruction of the ship and the burning, explosive death of all the thousands of Foe upon it.

"You got it, good buddy." 


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

After the ordeal of the Moonsong Stone and the race up the moonstream to intercept the ship, the Foe ship itself was something of a letdown. They cruised together through deserted corridors, ready at any moment to attack and destroy. Twice they did see Foe, but each time it was a lone drone easily halted in its tracks by Ecco's song and then dispatched with ease by Karkol.

"I hate these things," the shark muttered, shaking his head violently to clear it of the blood-mist. "I hate the damn smell of 'em..."

"Stay focused," Ecco admonished him. "We have to find our way to whatever passes for a control room in this thing."

"And then what?" the shark asked. "You got any idea how these things work?"

"Guess I'll have to figure it out as I go along," Ecco answered tightly. "I managed it in Atlantis, at least... couldn't be much harder."

"I don't think they'll have thoughtfully painted you a circuit diagram this time," Karkol pointed out with a rather desperate grin. "What do we have to do anyway--just find the brood mother and waste her? Sounds simple enough..."

"Let's wait until we see the mother before we make any judgements," Ecco told him. Wry amusement tinged the dolphin's grin. "Karkol, if there's one thing I've learned on this adventure, it's that you should never under any circumstances expect anything to be easy."

The shark said nothing, but he sensed Karkol's irritation. Great whites didn't need to do much thinking, generally--their lives were as simple and predictable as the tides. Greshruk symbolized the type... or did she? Ecco frowned to himself. Things had happened recently which changed everything he had ever learned about them. Greshruk and the sharks had risen to fight for Earth, selflessly sacrificing their own lives to allow the song to be heard. There was more to the Slayer than met the eye, as Afarellan had suggested. He glanced at Karkol, who swam quietly by his side with every air of being calm and confident. And to you too, he thought.

They rounded a corner and came across a place where the corridors diverged. There were three ways to go from here--two passages, round like tubes, led down to somewhere far below, and a third curved steadily upwards. Ecco paused and listened carefully. The faint mechanical humming was coming from above. "Up," he said simply.

"I thought so," Karkol agreed, turning with a flick of his fins. "Maybe we can cripple this thing if we take out its--its engines, or whatever it is makes it fly."

"We can't let any Foe escape," Ecco told him. "The brood mother, especially--somehow we have to destroy the ship and everything on it at the same time."

"Could be difficult." The big shark glanced back the way they had come, a sudden shadow of doubt flickering in his eyes. For a moment he seemed to founder, as if something had disturbed his concentration. "Uh..." He paused, then shook his head slightly and swam on. Ecco followed, a little confused.

"You okay, Karkol?"

The shark glanced back again, and that doubt hardened into decisiveness. "No," he said, and there was a soft growl in his voice. "Keep your voice down, pal. They're behind us. I think they know we're here."

"How?" Ecco turned and stared back down the tunnel. He could hear nothing... but then he saw, almost cut off by the downward curve, the spidery-limbed shadows on the floor. They were growing slowly as their owners approached. "There's no noise! How could you know?"

There was a tense, nervous grin on Karkol's face. "The lateral line... how we little fishies love it. C'mon, let's get moving. There's too many to fight."

"And nowhere to flee," Ecco added sourly, starting to move faster. Karkol just grunted in reply.

They swam up the tunnel, which twisted and turned strangely--it disoriented them, and soon they were no longer sure which way was up. Gravity wasn't around to give them clues now, even the greatly reduced gravity that had operated under Earth's waters. Wherever they were, they were too high or too far for it to operate. The weightlessness--true weightlessness--made Ecco feel a little queasy. He squashed the feeling. Behind them, Foe voices were raised for a moment in a low snarling that had the air of being some sort of conversation.

"They've found our trail," he said. "Remember how they could always track us down before? Either they smell us out or they've got senses we don't know about yet."

The snarling mutter escalated suddenly into the weird screeching Ecco knew so well. Karkol responded instantly, flinging himself forward. "Forget about stealth!" the shark yelled back at him. "We've just gotta get out of here before they bring the whole ship down on us!"

"Right!" Ecco gave chase. Behind them, the water or whatever it was in the ship erupted into a howling as the Foe came after them. They sound angry, he thought, and gulped.

The two fugitives dashed through tubing that looked far too much like it had once been alive for Ecco's taste. The inside of the Foe ship was a maze--tunnels joined other tunnels, everything bisected by the cables and conduits that seemed to have been put there just to get in their way. Either that or this was a part of the ship that wasn't really supposed to be traveled through. He supposed it could have been the latter, given that Karkol had had to chew through the hull to get inside. The question gnawed at him--how could the Foe have built this thing within Earth's oceans? Where had they got the material? How did they even know how to make it?

Flying out of the mouth of a tunnel, Karkol shot to a halt with fins splayed out, and Ecco had to take evasive action to avoid slamming into the shark. In front of them was some sort of wall, a circular plate of oily black metal with concentric ridges across its unhealthy-looking surface. Red lights gleamed faintly in the center. "Dead end," Ecco said, nosing quickly over the door. "I think it's locked." The hum was louder here, but it couldn't drown out the noise of the Foe behind them.

"Then we'll fight them," Karkol said with a snarl in his voice.

Ecco's eyes flickered over their surroundings, searching for a way out. He found it. "Karkol, come over here--quick. There's another of those grates. Maybe we can rip it off between us!"

"And hope it doesn't lead outside the ship," the shark remarked laconically, cruising over to take a look. Ecco backfinned as Karkol tentatively pushed his snout into the metallic grille, then opened his mouth and carefully took hold of a raised edge. Teeth scraped on the surface--he struggled for a better hold, found it, and then with calculated fury jerked his head from side to side, worrying the grille up and making a hole just big enough for them both to slip through. "Ik's krying kto close," Karkol got out through clenched teeth. "Quick!"

Ecco dashed forward and wriggled through the gap--there was a narrow opening beyond--then jammed himself against it and forced it open enough to let Karkol through. There was a flurry in the water around him and a big body shoved past, sandpaper skin grazing Ecco's side, then with undeniable force the grille pulled back into place and repaired itself. They were squashed together in a dark place that was very little wider than themselves.

"Isn't this one of those pipe things?" Karkol asked in a low whisper. "They're all over the place..."

"Could be," Ecco agreed, peering through the metal grille as best he could. The Foe were dimly visible through the mesh as they entered the area where they had been. There was baffled screeching from the alien creatures. Ecco grinned. "They're looking at the door," he informed the shark. "They don't know where we've gone! I think they think we got out through the door!"

"Let's not hang around and watch 'em figure it out." With some difficulty, Karkol turned round in the pipe, and Ecco felt him moving off.

The pipe was very dark, and cramped. Light came thinly in places from other grilles set into the walls at intervals so that they swam through lengths of darkness and patches of light. Ecco could hear the faint scraping of Karkol's fins against the sides, and every time he beat his own tail a little too strongly, it brushed the cool metallic surface at top and bottom. The material felt unpleasant to the touch in some indefinite but vaguely loathsome way.

They seemed to have been traveling for a very long time before anything noteworthy happened. Several times they had passed intersections, where more pipes joined onto the one they were in, but the other passages seemed to hold little else of interest. Ecco glanced out of most of the grilles as they passed by, but he never saw anything that looked hopeful--mostly they were other passages like the one they had left, and once a great wide room full of Foe drones tending machinery. The faint humming never grew any louder--it simply remained, somewhere far above them, a constant aural threat.

There didn't seem to be much activity, and that puzzled Ecco. "You'd have thought that they'd be more concerned," he whispered to Karkol as they passed another of the grilles. "I mean, they know there're two stowaways on board."

"Maybe they don't think we're anything to worry about," Karkol returned in a low voice. "Look at it this way--we aren't going anywhere. They probably figure they can just pick us up at their leisure."

Ecco thought about that for a while. It didn't feel a very comforting thought. He followed Karkol's tail through the darkness of the pipes, and only happened to glance through one of the grilles by accident. What he saw there made him stop dead. "Karkol, come back here! Quick!"

The shark backfinned with some difficulty--he could barely turn round in the tight confines of the pipe. "What?" he hissed. His black eyes gleamed faintly in the reflected light from the grille.

Ecco pushed his nose into the little puddle of light, and stared out into a large room. Their pipe seemed to be secreted somewhere far up, only a little below the roof. Misty contrails of vapor curled over the floor far below. The walls were covered with the strange tubes and protuberances of Foe architecture. Hundreds of odd lumps and bumps on the floor were partly shielded by the mist, but in the closest few Ecco could clearly see some sort of movement--a flicker of something. There were no Foe visible anywhere in the area.

"Yecch," Karkol said with an air of surprise. "Can you smell that?"

"I don't have a sense of smell," Ecco hissed back, irritated at the shark's superior senses, but he opened his mouth anyway to take a taste of the water. An indescribable sensation swept over him--a hot, overripe taste, with a sickly-sweet tinge. "Ugh!" he exclaimed, forgetting for a moment to keep his voice down--Karkol nudged him sharply. "What is that?" he asked, lowering his voice again.

The shark nosed carefully at the grille. "Let's find out," he said softly.

"You're not serious," Ecco began, but Karkol suddenly swung his head into the metal mesh with enough force to blow it right out of its seatings. It drifted to the floor, writhing and jerking as if it were a severed limb. Smoothly Karkol slid out into the open space, and Ecco followed nervously. Without the grille between them and the vapor, the atmosphere of the room was even more pungent. Billows of the fog rolled past their faces and the sickly-sweet stench made Ecco gag. Steeling himself, he dived down to examine the objects affixed to the floor.

The mist got in the way, and he had to shove his nose right up to one of the things before he could see it properly. It was a ridged, oval shape with a jagged edge at the top. The inside was hollow and quite empty. The whole thing was brittle, and very slightly translucent. Ecco frowned, wondering what exactly it reminded him of.

His eyes slid sideways, and he saw the thing that was faintly visible through the unbroken skin of another nearby vessel. The sickly tropical heat in the room was suddenly very simple to explain.

"Karkol," Ecco hissed, hardly daring to raise his voice. "These are eggs. Foe eggs. This is some kind of hatchery..!"

The unborn Foe larva was an odd, almost sadly grotesque thing--the nearest Ecco could come to describing it was a sort of fat and legless shrimp. It pulsated slightly to the rhythm of a heartbeat, curled up snugly in its shelled prison. Long antennae were curled neatly around the plump, sleeping body. The vestiges of tentacles were visible along its sides--they would grow, eventually, into long barbed limbs. The sight was revolting, but at the same time he couldn't help feeling a strange surge of pity for the ugly little unborn thing. It was so helplessly horrible...

But still... There must be hundreds of eggs here. All still, silent, waiting for their moment to be born. The larva he could see through the shell wasn't fully formed yet, but it was getting there. Ecco glanced down at the floor, and saw something else that froze his blood. A thin line... an indent. A trapdoor, designed to be opened...

The Foe plot became clear to him, all at once, like a rush of freezing water. This was why they had built the ship. This was why they had gone to all that trouble to get airborne, to leave the depths of the ocean where they had been safe. These larvae would hatch, maybe not right now, but soon. The ship would be in position, high above the surface of the Earth. Then, when the right time and place had arrived, the trapdoor would be opened. Infant Foe would shower down onto a world still reeling from the aftermath of the first onslaught. Nothing would be able to escape--there would be nowhere to hide.

"They don't want to leave," he whispered softly. "They're quite happy where they are..."

Karkol was opposite him, quite suddenly. Ecco tore his attention away from the trapdoor: he looked up into the cold black eyes of the shark. From that expression he knew that there was no need to explain--it was the same expression he had seen on Greshruk as she tore into the Foe at the Moonsong Stone. Karkol knew--he had seen, and understood, just like Ecco had.

"I think I fancy a bite," Karkol said.

Ecco looked down at the eggs with their horrendous cargo. "I think I'll join you."

"We'll start at either end, and meet in the middle." The shark turned and glided off towards one end of the long chamber, suddenly quite serene. "We can't afford to miss any," he said, glancing back. "These things are the future of the Foe."

"And that's what we're here for." Ecco turned towards the nearest egg, and though his words were spoken to Karkol, his eyes remained on the unborn larva within. "To destroy the Foe's future... and defend our own."

Only a flurry of movement answered him, and the thin, dying scream of an infant Foe. Karkol's jaws closed on one of the eggs with a fury that was quite shocking--the shell burst, as did the creature within. Foe blood mixed with ichor from the inside of the egg, and flooded out into the hatchery. Ecco heard scratching from the floor, and realized that the other eggs were starting to hatch, perhaps forewarned by the death of one of their own. He flung himself into battle with a relish that quite surprised himself.

It didn't actually take too long. A mixture of mist and Foe blood soon turned the water muddy as egg after egg was pierced, either by Karkol's teeth or Ecco's ramming snout. Not one of the larvae escaped--they saw to that. The shark remained perfectly controlled despite the amount of blood in the water, biting through each egg with careful, almost dainty precision. Once they had done, Ecco turned and saw that a number of the larvae had struggled free of the eggs after all. They wriggled grotesquely as they clustered up against the far wall, mewling pathetically and hopelessly clumsy in their efforts to escape. Their blind, eyeless snouts gaped at him in futile defiance, bristling with pale translucent teeth. Calmly he cruised over to them and dispatched the squealing larvae one by one with blows that smashed their heads or chests. Karkol picked the last few off the walls, and bit them neatly in two.

The great door at the end hissed as it rose to admit Foe warriors. Enraged at the devastation, they charged like furies towards the two invaders. The bloodied, churned-up water was filled anew with their screaming.

"Let's get out of here!" Karkol yelled, shooting towards the grille from whence they had entered. Ecco followed, dashing between the smashed eggs as the Foe snapped at his tail. They piled into the pipe and took off, each expecting the sickening pain of attack any moment. It never came. Ecco and Karkol were able to slip through the narrow pipes because of their own streamlined shapes--the Foe got stuck.

"It's okay!" Ecco called to the retreating shape of the shark. "I don't think they can follow us!"

"They'll think of something!" Karkol shouted back. Indeed, there was an ominous metallic scraping sound from the wall of their pipe, suggesting that the Foe were now furious enough to have started digging through the hull.

Ecco let out a nervy little yelp. "Go! Go!" He pushed forward, shoving at Karkol's tail. Instantly the shark was moving again, dashing forward through the dark tunnel. The scratching didn't follow them--the piping passed effortlessly through thick walls that prevented the Foe from following their progress.

They didn't stop until they had entered a still tighter pipe and left the hatchery far behind. Ecco grimaced, realizing that he could still taste the miasma of blood and sweetness that had filled the atmosphere in that room. Now, all was quiet again, save for the distant humming--closer now.

"Now what?" he asked out loud, listening to his heart as it slowed down.

There was a loud mechanical grating noise. Karkol jerked and tried to turn round; his body hit the sides of the pipe and he growled in pain. Ecco, stuck behind the big shark, struggled to see what was going on--Karkol's body blocked the whole pipe. "What is it?" he asked, panicking.

Karkol's words came back to him slightly muffled. "Some sort of door just shut on me. Pipe's closed. We're gonna have to back up."

Ecco tried to turn and found that he could--just. It required an inordinate amount of contortion on his part, but by bending his long body right in half and tucking his head and flippers in (that brought his nose into forced contact with his own tail, which was somewhere no dolphin's snout had willingly gone before) he managed it. Just in time to see the other gate slam shut. "Uh-oh," he said quietly.

"What?" Karkol struggled weakly, but gave it up as a bad job--he wasn't half as flexible as the dolphin. "What's up? Is it them?"

"No..." He swam forward, ignoring an ache in muscles he'd just strained, and nosed at the door. It was thick metal, certainly nothing they could chew through in a hurry. "I think they've closed off all the ventilation shafts, Karkol. We're stuck in this section of tunnel 'til they open it up again."

"You mean we're trapped here? They could just check the pipes one by one until they find us..."

"That's probably their plan," Ecco agreed grimly. "Is there a grille near you? We're gonna have to get out of here and back into the ship."

There was more bumping and scraping as Karkol struggled to back up. After a moment, his voice came back. "Yeah, there is one. Leads out into another big room. I can't see any Foe. You want I bash through it?"

"If you can." Ecco listened, but he could hear no sound of Foe, although there was something else hovering at the outer edge of his consciousness now. He frowned, trying to make it out--he couldn't, the humming was drowning it out. "Karkol, hurry if you can. I don't want to be stuck in here too long."

"You and me both," the shark muttered. There was another bump, and then a loud reverberating clang. "Got it." Ecco felt a wash of changing pressure on his tail as Karkol exited the pipe. He grinned, then realized that he was facing the wrong way. He would have to turn round or swim backwards. He groaned softly. It seemed he was having to pick up a lot of unusual delphine skills...

Clumsily, he backfinned the two or three lengths until the light of the opening washed over his side. Karkol cruised past, grinning cheerfully. "All clear!" the shark called, whisking by. "C'mon out, Ecco, you're not gonna believe what I just found!"

Ecco backfinned again and squeezed his head out of the opening. No longer muffled by the pipe, the odd sound hit him.

Dolphins.

He could hear dolphins talking. 


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

They were in another very large room, this one perhaps even bigger than the hatchery. The walls were lined with pipes carrying various liquids, but the majority of the floor space was taken up by giant rectangular tanks. Ecco pressed his nose up against the cool glass of the nearest one--the interior was filled mostly with water, plain old seawater, but at the top was air.

The delphine voices were audible from here--they were at the other end of the room. He couldn't make out words. The singers were speaking in a tired monotone, as if they hadn't the energy to do any more than that. Slowly Ecco drew back from the tank and began to swim, finding his way between the great empty vessels. Karkol was nosing around the bottoms of the containers, his black eyes puzzled.

"Hello?" Ecco called softly.

The dolphins were instantly silent. He swam forward between giant walls of glass, trying to figure out where the noise had come from. One of these tanks, yes... why were most of them empty? There was debris on the bottom of one or two, fish scales. He started to swim faster, unnerved by the strangeness of the huge room. It looked like some sort of gigantic...aquarium, that was the word. Ecco tried to remember all he had heard about aquariums--Man had once put sea creatures in chambers of glass so that he could look at them.

"Hello?" he called again. "Where are you? It's okay, I'm a friend!"

There was the same frightened silence for a long moment, and then, from the far corner of the room a soft voice answered. "Who are you?"

"I'm a dolphin. I'm trying to find a way to stop the Foe ship." There was something familiar about that other voice, but he didn't consider it for the moment, trying to triangulate from the echoes where the sound had come from. The tankfuls of water were messing up the acoustics and making it difficult for him to navigate.

"We're over here... in the corner."

He swam onwards, faster, and turned towards the very end tank. This one was not empty--it held several slender blue-gray shapes. Ecco swam towards them swiftly, shocked to find other dolphins aboard ship, and then froze dead in the water as the others turned towards him.

"Ecco?" Corse swam forward quickly to the edge of the tank and pressed his nose against the glass, his eyes wide with wonder. "Ecco?" The Sapphire Bay pod leader's voice was stunned--as stunned as Ecco felt at seeing not only Corse but the others of his family now appearing, one by one. "Is that you?"

"We've been here for ages," Corse said, in a low, exhausted voice. "Ever since those things took us from the bay. We thought they'd killed or taken you too. They've held us here ever since..."

Ecco was shocked at the appearance of his friends. He had known that he was changing--growing more slender and muscled with the exercise, acquiring scars and a slightly ragged appearance from all the fights in which he'd been involved. He had been prepared for surprise from the others when they were finally reunited. But what he hadn't been prepared for was seeing a change in them that was greater still.

They all looked half-starved. Their ribs were visible through the soft skin on their sides. All the dolphins had a sunken, miserable appearance--their eyes were dull and they seemed to have lost much of that essential spark that made them them in his eyes. Ai looked half-dead, and was being supported in the water by Klik and Star. Even she had no eyes for Ecco--his childhood playmate merely lifted her head and looked at him for a moment, then dropped her gaze again, as if she were too tired to maintain it.

"What did they do to you?" he asked softly, struggling for the words. He had thought when he and Karkol destroyed the Hatchery that they had seen the full depths of the Foe's infamy--this was making him rethink everything once again. The sight of his friends in this state was worse than the sight of the larvae.

"We're hungry," Corse said, in a low voice. "Nothing to eat. We watched while they emptied out the other tanks..."

"Emptied?" Ecco gazed round at the huge room with all its empty tanks. "There were others here?"

The Sapphire Bay pod leader laughed weakly. "Were. Those monsters have been using us as a handy larder, Ecco. We fed their young with our life-blood. There were all sorts of creatures here--fish, turtles, seals, shellfish, even plants. They've emptied out all the tanks one by one. We're the last batch."

Dead waters...

"I don't know how you came to be here," Corse said, looking at him with hopeless eyes, "but it'd have been better if they had killed you. I thought--when you weren't here--they had. You should have stayed away..."

"No, you've got it all wrong!" Ecco fluked up to the tank, infuriated that he couldn't reach Corse and the others--they were separated from him by less than an inch, but it might as well have been the world. "I'm going to stop the Foe!"

"How?" the Sapphire Bay pod leader asked with a sharp little twist. "You're barely more than a calf. Not all of us together could defeat those things. They overpowered us with ease. What makes you think you'll do any better?"

"I have," Ecco said simply. "Look at me, Corse. Take a good long look. Do I look like the dolphin you knew?" He snorted. "I've had weeks to change, and by Delphinius I have! I've been further than a dolphin ever has before. I've spoken with Greshruk the Slayer, and with the Asterite too. I've swum with killer whales. I've escaped the Foe countless times, found the home bay of the lone-swimmers and I came here up the moonstream like Tidesinger. Don't judge me by who I was, Corse."

The other dolphin started, and then stared at him with a new respect in his eyes. "I see," he said softly, "I do. You've grown up in the time we've been apart. But" --he rose and blew-- "the question remains, how are you going to stop them? There were killer whales here, Ecco, and they ended up as food despite their superior strength."

"I know," Ecco said quietly, "but I'll find a way." His voice was determined; he looked at Corse with a challenging expression, refusing to drop his gaze.

Suddenly, Star let out a squeal of fright. "Ecco, behind you!"

He whirled with a burst of Battlesong ready, fully expecting to see a Foe drone closing in. But there was nothing there--Karkol, having cruised out from behind another tank, blinked and glanced quickly around. "I don't see nothin-" Ecco began, turning back again towards the other dolphins, but then it dawned on him.

"Shark!" Ai wailed. The dolphins panicked, dashing this way and that in their glass tank, but of course there was nowhere for them to go.

Ecco glanced at Karkol with a slightly helpless expression. The shark dipped his pectoral fins and tossed his head, a great white's equivalent of a shrug. "Would it help if I told 'em I'm a vegetarian?" he suggested.

"Oh, please," Ecco muttered, trying not to laugh. He turned back to the captive dolphins. "Listen!" he cried. "I know this is kinda hard to understand, but the shark is on our side! His name is Karkol! We came up here together to fight the Foe!"

Corse stared at him as the commotion slowly quieted. "A shark? You've been swimming with a shark?"

"What's wrong with that?" Karkol asked defensively.

Ecco would have sighed, remembering the problems they had had with the lone-swimmers in Lunar Bay. "The sooner we get out of here, the better," he muttered, then spoke up again. "Yes, a shark. Karkol's a friend. Without him, I'd be dead several times over. So just calm down, people, he's not going to try and eat any of you!" Tearing his attention away from the silent dolphins, Ecco turned to face Karkol. "Find anything that looked helpful?"

"I think I know how to let 'em out," Karkol said, motioning with his snout towards something near the door. "There's a big bank of controls and stuff there. They open those gates at the end of each tank. But dolphins're air-breathers, right? They'll drown if we let 'em out."

"Don't suppose we can give them the Power of Air?" Ecco suggested. The shark just shook his head. Irritated, Ecco glanced back at the other dolphins in the tank. "How did you guys get in there, anyway?"

"The Foe brought a machine," Corse said dully. "A great big thing, the size of a whale. There was a bright light that lifted us up... It pulled us all right out of the water and up a funnel, then dumped us in here." His snout gestured up to where the end of a large tube hung suspended above the tank. "It's closed off. We tried to jump up it before... before we grew too weak." He closed his eyes in silent despair.

"Don't give up," Ecco begged, then turned to Karkol again as an idea grew in his head. "Karkol, there was air in the hatchery. If we could get them there somehow, then open the doors, we might be able to lower them down the same way they came up..."

"We're in no condition for a fight," Corse said. "Ai was hurt when they pulled us out of the water, and Orcus..."

For the first time Ecco saw the common dolphin, on his own in the far corner of the tank. Orcus's wounds were only half-healed. His eyes were closed; he lay on the floor, as if dead. Ecco could see no sign of life.

"He's been like this for days," Corse explained. "We push him to the air to breathe every few minutes." The pod leader sighed heavily. "His life-mate was in the next tank, Ecco--they took her away a week ago."

"Oh, no," Ecco said softly. "Poor Orcus..."

"Look, no offense, people, but we'll have to talk about this later." Karkol turned and glided towards the control panels. "Just come and look, Ecco--there's gotta be something on here that will help."

With a regretful glance back at the dolphins, Ecco followed the shark. The controls were certainly impressive--he had never seen so many levers and buttons, not even in Atlantis. Swiftly he scanned over the banks, noting the weird alien architecture of the controls and the way the levers were designed for Foe limbs. But there were features he recognized. Sixteen round buttons all in a line... there were sixteen tanks. Fifteen of the buttons were dark, but one was lit up palely green. Ecco's snout brushed over it, then he glanced back at the other dolphins in their tank and drew back.

"What are you going to do?" Karkol asked curiously.

Ecco frowned, looking at the controls. "We need a diversion..."

There was a big lever right in the center. He grasped the shaft in his jaws, and pulled hard.

They were plunged into darkness. The soft mechanical hum in the background wound down and died, and the shrill, frightened cries of the dolphins became the only sound on the ship.

"You got your diversion!" Karkol yelled. "Turn it back on again!"

Ecco heaved the lever back, badly frightened--the lights went on again, and a low rising whine became the familiar hum of the engines. "Whoops," he said shamefacedly, as Karkol's annoyed eyes came to rest on him. "Guess that one cuts the power..."

"Try a different one," the shark said firmly.

Ecco shoved another lever.

Something happened to gravity--it came back with a vengeance. They were both thrown violently against the wall as the world seemed to tip on one end. Inside the tank, the water surged as the dolphins slammed against the glass barrier, squealing. Clenching his jaw, Ecco fought his way back to the control panels, and swiftly tried lever after lever, button after button. Hisses of hydraulic mechanisms filled the air as all the various doors in the area opened and closed, lights flashed and the whole ship shook variously. Sparks suddenly erupted from the console, and klaxons somewhere else sounded frantic warnings.

"I think you just told everybody where we are!" Karkol yelled over the din.

Ecco let out an infuriated whistle and jammed a final lever down so hard he broke it. The surging, bucking ship returned to normal--almost--but the doors were all still open, and there was still a definite gravitational pull to the left. Outside, a wide corridor was revealed; only half the lights were on. Some of the fuses must have blown or something. The sound of the Foe was audible, faintly--if the tone was anything to go by, they were screaming baffled commands at each other. Ecco grinned sharply, imagining the chaos that must be going on.

He swam to the open door and looked out. No Foe yet. Swiftly Ecco exited and went to the left, remembering that they had come from that direction via the pipe. Out of caution he kept to the shadows, just in case any Foe were about in the area, but he saw nothing hostile. He passed two doorways and rounded a corner, and there was the now familiar sight of the hatchery, mist spilling out of the door that was half-open.

He turned and swam back, counting the lengths in his head. Around a thousand yards... the other dolphins should be able to swim that, even exhausted as they were. Ecco glanced about swiftly, and re-entered the tank room. "Karkol, the hatchery's right there. I think we should get them out of the tank and to safety as fast as possible. I don't know how long all this is going to throw the Foe."

"Right." The shark glided smoothly over to the controls. "You want I press this?" he asked.

"When I say." Ecco swam up to the tank, finding the door at one end--barely visible seams joined this to the main body of the tank. The other dolphins watched him silently with frightened brown eyes. He looked up into Corse's face and paused, preparing what he had to say. "Listen," he said finally. "Everyone take a long breath, as long as you can. Get Orcus to as well. I'm going to let you out of the tank, and then we're gonna swim along a corridor and into another room where there's air. We might get attacked on the way, so you'll have to hurry. Can you make it?"

"We'll make it," Corse said grimly. "Klik and I will handle Orcus."

"Right." Ecco watched silently as, one after the other, the dolphins took breaths from the air at the top of the tank. "Ready? Karkol, now!"

The shark poked the button down. There was a loud bang of releasing pressure, and a cloud of water and air boomed out from behind the seams of the tank's glass wall. Ecco was pushed back by the force of it--the end of the tank swung open, allowing the Sapphire Bay dolphins and Orcus to swim free. It was a sorry cavalcade--Ai could barely swim, and Orcus needed to be pushed and prodded into action by Klik.

"Let's go," Ecco said, turning towards the door and feeling acutely ashamed of his own fit, strong body in the face of his friends' starvation. The dolphins flinched away from Karkol as he passed, but he gave them a wide berth and slipped out into the corridor instead.

"I'll watch out for Foe," he called back. "Try and keep 'em out of sight."

"Will do..." Ecco practically swam rings around the other dolphins, trying to exert them to greater effort. Ai swam awkwardly, favoring one side and letting out periodic soft whimpers of pain. Their progress was painfully slow. One by one, the dolphins slipped under the door and out into the corridor where Karkol waited, glancing nervously around for sign of any approaching enemy. It seemed to take forever to cross the long stretch--Ecco could have done it in a few short seconds, and he grew frustrated at the others' weakness.

"They're coming," Karkol warned from back down the corridor. "I can't see 'em yet, but I can hear 'em coming."

Ecco chivvied Ai towards the hatchery door, Corse keeping pace on his other side. It took both of them to shove the struggling female under the door and into the other room; Klik took charge, pushing her upwards to where the air waited. Ecco blinked, seeing all the other dolphins making swiftly for the surface. Was that all the time I used to have? he thought. Between one breath and the next?

"Ecco?" Corse was swimming down towards him again, fighting off exhaustion. The pod leader drew up a length or two away, and looked at him with puzzlement. "Don't you need to breathe at all?"

"I'll explain later," Ecco said hurriedly, hearing Karkol shout from outside. He glanced round and saw a panel beside the door with another button on it. Only one thing that could be used for... "Listen, I'm going to lock you guys in here, okay? Don't open the door for anything. You should be safe enough in here for now, the Foe can't get in the way we can." Without waiting for Corse's reply, he fluked over to the panel. "I'll see you later!" he called.

"Ecco..."

He turned.

"Whatever you're going to do, good luck." The pod leader looked at him with a grave expression. "I always misjudged you... Ecco-fa."

Ecco stared at him. The honorific term jarred with his own name. He had always held Corse in such deep respect... now, something intangible had changed between them. Ecco was the one with all the power. He wasn't sure if he liked that. "Bye," he said softly.

He hit the button. The door went down swiftly--Ecco dashed beneath it, and cleared the descending metal weight by a whisker. Karkol was waiting outside, anxiously glancing left and right--the sound of the Foe was very close now in the tunnels. Ecco found the panel on the other side of the door and rammed it sharply with his snout--there was a burst of sparks and the green light on the button flickered and died. Just to make sure, he hit the button once or twice, but it only clicked dully. The door remained closed.

"That's it," he said to Karkol. "The Foe are after us alone, now. They'll leave the others be." He swallowed hard. "It's all up to us."

"I hear you," the shark agreed solemnly. "Let's get going."

Behind them, Foe drones erupted round the corner. Ecco and Karkol set off down their chosen passage, flitting in and out of the shadows. From now on there would be no more hiding. It was time to find the mother. 


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

The Foe ship was listing, dragging heavily to one side. The engines no longer sounded smooth as if they were purring--they surged and coughed, and the lights brightened and dimmed in tandem with them. In places, the tubes and conduits that stretched across the passages had fractured, and jets of pale white mist spilled out into the corridor. Struggling through them, Ecco and Karkol singed themselves more than once.

"You did a heck of a lot of damage," the shark said admiringly, as the lights flickered on and off again. "You think the ship's crippled?"

"Not yet," Ecco answered, glancing back--he could hear Foe screaming back there, and the alien creatures sounded enraged. "The engines are still on, Karkol. This thing's still moving, wherever it's actually moving to."

"Where are we going, anyway?"

Ecco was trying once more to follow the sound of the engines. They drew him irresistibly upward; he picked passages almost at random, through some sort of instinct he hadn't known he had. But the Foe ship was a maze, and every passageway that appeared at first sight to lead there straight, usually turned back on itself or looped about like a pretzel. He rounded a corner and sighed with irritation as he saw a door at the end, almost closed. There was only a few inches of space underneath--not enough for them to wriggle through.

Karkol cruised past him and examined the door for a moment, then shoved his wedge-shaped nose underneath it. Ecco watched silently as the shark braced himself against the ground, splaying his fins out on the ridged metallic floor of the ship, then heaved upwards. With a scream of stressed metal, the door rose jerkily. Once again Ecco was impressed by the shark's strength, and he wondered what Karkol would become when he had his full growth.

"Come on," the shark said simply, and slipped under the gap he had made. Ecco followed.

Several Foe were in the wide space beyond--they looked up, or at least raised their heads in that manner, and froze for a moment. It was enough to seal their fates--Karkol charged, roaring, and his jaws snapped through the spine of one. Ecco stopped the others dead in the water, and the shark turned and came at each one in turn. It was a neat job, but all the same one flailing limb caught Karkol around the head and scored a deep mark that just missed the eye. Dark blood billowed into the water.

"Owch," Ecco winced.

The shark shook his head, fighting against instincts that saw pain as an invitation to start chewing on the nearest organic substance. "I--I'm okay," he managed.

"You sure?"

"Yeah... all under control." Karkol grinned a little and then turned to look around.

They had entered a much wider intersection, where five or six tunnels turned into one great hall. In front of them, two giant doors (wide open now, thanks to Ecco's playing with the controls) led into an even bigger room. It towered above them like a cliff. Glittering banks of strange machinery filled the place, but Ecco's attention was instantly drawn past all that. Slowly, with eyes wide with wonder, he swam forward into the room and over to the giant translucent bubble that shielded off one half of the room.

"Oh my..." he said softly.

The bubble's edge was like a window, letting him see out of the ship itself. A panoramic vista of purest blackness, velvety and chill as the deep-down dark, filled his entire field of vision. All across it, stars shone--not the faded stars of a night sky on Earth, but pure glittering lights, pale and frosty and unbearably bright. There were hundreds of thousands of them, far too many for him to count. Right in the center of his field of view, five stars seemed to shine brighter than the rest. Ecco felt a pricking on his forehead, and he knew that his own star-markings were blazing up under the starlight. So it's not the moon that makes them glow, he thought. It's Delphinius... it's the stars themselves.

Below them, vaster than should have been possible, was a blue-green globe, its face covered with slowly shifting wisps of white and gray. It shone faintly luminescent in the darkness, as if it were giving off its own diffuse light. The moon was not visible right now--perhaps it was behind the Earth, or perhaps it was simply hidden behind the bulkheads of the Foe ship. Ecco stared down at the warm blue-green vision with a lump in his throat. That was it... that was home. And that was probably the closest he was ever going to get to it again.

He could see now, from up here, what nobody ever realized from down there. The Earth was alive. It lived and breathed, it suffered and it could even die. And it was indescribably beautiful.

For the first time Ecco thought: perhaps the killer whales were right. Perhaps it was best to die for something like this. Something that was truly worth dying for...

Karkol was beside him, looking down at the Earth without saying anything; he knew that the shark was having his own thoughts on their final task here. Slowly, Ecco turned and swam away from the window towards the ship's controls. He looked over the gleaming banks of buttons and switches, and then his attention was caught by an odd pulsating bubble that floated above one particular control deck. He cruised over to it, looked down at the panel, and carefully pressed a button. A three-dimensional scene flickered to life inside the bubble, the small image wavering slightly from ripples passing across the surface. The picture showed the interior of the tank room. A few Foe were poking around on the control panel he had ruined there.

Ecco pressed the button again, and the scene switched to the interior of one of the tunnels, viewing a door. He suddenly had an idea, and began to press it swiftly, flicking through various images of the inside of the ship. Come on, come on, where's the hatchery...

Suddenly there it was--he had to stop himself automatically pressing the button again. The small image in the bubble displayed the ruined hatchery with its mists still creeping slowly across the floor. The dolphins were visible in the center of the room, clustered together. Ecco grinned and looked down at the controls again. Corse had mentioned a light which lifted them out of the water...

He pulled a lever. Something moved at the top of the little scene--he wasn't able to see it or hear what was going on, but he saw the dolphins shrink back in fright. "Don't be afraid," Ecco begged, though he knew they couldn't hear him. "Everything's okay now..."

He jabbed at another button, and a strong golden light spilled down from that half-invisible thing at the top of the scene. The dolphins were caught in it; they froze still, as if it was stopping them from moving. Ecco grimaced. Have to hurry now... open the portal, get them back into Earth's atmosphere... There had to be something here to open that trapdoor. He grasped a lever that looked hopeful and yanked down on it, and was rewarded as the entire floor of the hatchery swung open onto another panoramic view of Earth, close up. Ordinarily that would have released a swarm of Foe larvae into Earth's atmosphere, but as it was only a few pieces of eggshell fell and drifted slowly down. The dolphins were still and silent in the golden beam.

Ecco searched the controls for something that looked like it would lower them. It needed to be something that went down... His eye was caught by a slider; he gently depressed it. The beam strengthened and intensified, stabbing down to some point beneath the shifting clouds of Earth; the captive dolphins were lowered steadily towards it, out of the bottom of the ship. Ecco grimaced, hoping that he had managed to hit the five-sixths that was water on the Earth's surface and not the one-sixth that was land.

"That's it," he called to Karkol, as the dolphins disappeared from sight into the cloud cover. "They're gone. We're all alone here."

The shark tore his attention away from the view with some difficulty, and came back towards him. "Then there's only one thing left to do," he said simply. "We gotta kill the brood mother."

"I don't know how we'd do that," Ecco said worriedly. "We don't even know where she is. Karkol, I've had another idea--maybe we could destroy the ship."

"With us on it," the shark remarked.

He lifted his head and looked Karkol in the eye. "We're not going to get out any other way, Karkol. The beam is the only thing that could get us back down to Earth, and it has to be operated from here. Even if we managed that somehow, we'd be leaving the ship up here and the mother too. Destroying the ship would solve all our problems."

"It sure would," Karkol said with an ironic twist to his voice. "Well, let's get on with it then." Without another word, he turned and swam off to take a look at the rest of the controls. Ecco watched his retreating tail with an unhappy feeling. The shark was so loyal, so accepting of his fate... He wished he felt the same, but even though sight of the silent Earth outside the window strengthened his resolve, he felt as if inside he was being chewed up by a million tiny sharks. He didn't want to die, damnit!

He turned and examined the controls again, moving slowly from one panel to another. Behind him, the bubble-picture showed an empty hatchery devoid both of life and atmosphere. Karkol jabbed his snout into a couple of buttons in a desultory fashion, but nothing much seemed to happen. Ecco looked away from the shark and found what he was looking for on the biggest control deck there: a whole range of switches. Something told him that this was it. He cruised over and lightly pressed down the green-lit one. Lights flickered into life across the deck, and the bubble at the top flashed up a long list of alien symbols. Ecco blinked at them, unsure what they meant exactly; he hoped he didn't have to enter a password.

Now... Very carefully, he flipped two switches and then pushed a small lever. The unhealthy whine of the engines died into silence. Ecco glanced over the console once more, and then pressed a button. A long list of symbols came up; he skipped over them, pushed another button. More hieroglyphics. Ecco blinked, noticing that the pictures were the same as the ones on the keys before him. Could that be it..?

"Hurry it up, Ecco," Karkol said tensely. "We've got company."

There were Foe in the doorway. Hundreds of them--perhaps all the Foe left on the ship. They were silent. The flickering lights gleamed off their dark carapaces. Ecco glanced up, puzzled. "Why don't they attack?" he asked softly.

"I dunno," Karkol answered, frowning. "It's like they're waiting for something..."

There was a grinding noise from above. The Foe, silent in the doorway, made no move. Ecco and Karkol stared up in shock and horror as the ceiling of the room began to part, sliding back on itself. Cracks were revealed which became sliding panels, moving back to reveal a dark circular hole. Something moved within it.

An immense, fleshy bulk descended slowly into the room, with a horrible smooth alien grace. It looked Foe-like, or like the Foe larvae perhaps, but it was terribly different. For one thing, it was huge--hundreds of times bigger than Ecco or Karkol. It filled nearly the whole of the room. And then... the thing had eyes. Glittering, pupilless, blood-colored gems.

The Foe mother was black, armored in chitin like some hideous insect--the best thing Ecco could compare her to was a clawless lobster with a hideously swollen belly, and even that could barely come close to describing the gigantic monstrosity before them. Two pairs of jaws worked slowly, one inside the other; the teeth flashed metallic in the electric light of the control room. The creature bristled with spiked limbs; her stalked gaze fell upon them like the gaze of a shark, but a thousand times worse for the silent, mindless hunger in it.

"Ssssssssttthh..."

Karkol began to backfin slowly, with difficulty. Ecco was frozen at the control panel, able to do nothing more than stare. The mother--the Queen of the Foe--swollen with unborn young, floated slowly towards them. Segmented tentacles whipped out, smashing control panels and snapping conduits. Showers of multicolored sparks rained down around her from the damaged ship. The Foe drones remained unmoving in the doorway, watching silently.

"Sssshhreeeeee..!"

"Karkol," Ecco said slowly, struggling to get the words out, "I can destroy the ship, but I need more time..."

The shark didn't even look at him. His eyes remained fixed on the apparition of the Foe Queen. "I'll try and distract her. Get going."

Ecco turned and faced the control panel again. The weird alien writing spread out before him in the field of the bubble. To gain access... He stared at the screen and then swiftly pressed down the first key in the sequence. The bubble cleared and a red light began to flash steadily on and off in the room.

With a scream of rage, the Foe Queen floated forward, reaching out with barbed tentacles to smash Ecco into pieces--but Karkol was there before him. The shark charged forward, slamming into the Queen's chest, and then darted away as a tentacle slashed at the air where he had been. He ducked and dived and then swam in again to bite a chunk out of her shoulder. A cloud of dark ichor--only by a great stretch of the imagination could it be called blood--gouted into the water. The Queen shrilled her rage and lashed out again, but Karkol dodged. He faced off with her; the two circled slowly, small shark and gigantic shellfish.

Ecco tried to shut out all sounds and sights and concentrate on the panel before him. There had been twelve digits. Squeezing his eyes shut, he visualized that screen again, and then very carefully pressed the first of the twelve keys. A shape appeared before him in the bubble.

The Queen turned towards him again, sensing his intention. Karkol dived down and bit deep into one of the tentacles--black fluid gushed again. She flailed at the shark and caught him on the back, opening a long ragged gash in his dark gray skin. Undeterred, he charged her again, dodged two of the flailing limbs and rammed her in the forehead, between the evilly gleaming ruby eyes. His jaws scraped the chitinous armor, and he slid away alongside her again. Enraged, she pursued him.

Now what... Ecco stared at the bubble, willing himself to remember the sequence. Three more symbols floated before his mind; swiftly he pushed the keys down. Three more shapes appeared within the bubble, forming part of an interlocking arc. He frowned at it, trying to think what it could mean. He needed nine more keystrokes... He visualized the symbols that had come up beforehand, stared at the keys, pressed one more. Another piece flashed into being on the screen.

The Queen turned again, and Karkol whizzed down and severed one of the segmented tentacles with one perfectly judged bite. She shrilled in pain. The Foe in the doorway began to advance slowly, and Ecco let out a wail of panic. He stared at the keys with terror in his eyes. Shark-tooth or star next? He couldn't remember..! "Tidesinger!" he wailed in despair.

Something flashed outside the window--the stars of Delphinius, gleaming bright and hot in the squid-ink sky. From far away there drifted a faint sound, that singing Ecco had heard so long ago in Sapphire Bay. Singing in the stars... but this time, without Earth's atmosphere in the way, he could understand the words.

Time is our river Along it we pass Through seas of wonder The pale mirror's glass Pass first the stone To ward off the fight Carry the star To infinite light Let nose touch to tail Return to the start Love be our guide And music our art

Ecco stared at the keys. The first one he had pressed was two wavy lines... something like a river? The connection was tenuous at best, but maybe... just maybe...

He frowned. The last one he had pressed had been the one shaped like an oval... the stone? Again he stared at the keys. If so... Pass first the stone to ward off the fight... a key that carried the very essence of fighting. Ecco grinned desperately and pushed down the key with the symbol like a shark's tooth. Another shape flashed into being in the bubble, turning the arc into almost half a circle of interlocking jigsaw pieces. Now the star... He pressed it, and got another piece of the puzzle.

The Queen lashed out as Karkol flew around her like a hyperactive sprat--next to the gigantic Foe mother, he looked little bigger. The Foe drones were heading straight for him now. Ecco clenched his jaws together as he stared at the keys, knowing that there was almost no time left. Infinite light... nose to tail... He shoved down the key with the infinity symbol on it, then one with a horseshoe shape. Two more puzzle-pieces flashed up on the bubble. The dolphin's mind raced as he tried to remember the last three lines of the song. Return to the start... love be our guide... The spiral then the one that looked like a heart...

Suddenly one of the tentacles lashed out and caught Karkol's outstretched pectoral fin, shearing the black tip right off. The shark roared in pain as more of his blood entered the water. Then... He had fought off his instincts this long, but the added injury sent him over the edge. Karkol's black eyes rolled back, his jaw came forward, and he charged straight at the Queen, bristling with teeth. Blood hung about him in a cloud. The shark took a slap from one of the barbed tentacles which laid him open from gills to stomach, and then his jaws sank deep into one of the pupilless ruby eyes and put it out for good.

The Foe Queen screamed.

Panels shattered at the sound of that dreadful cry--eruptions of sparks jetted out into the control room. Long cracks splintered across the face of the window. The Foe drones rushed forward as one, but they weren't as fast as their blinded mother. She lunged forward, tentacles whipping out like stingers. They caught the shark dead center and tore into his skin. The shark writhed in the grip of the bladed things, snapping and tearing at them even then, refusing to give up, and then the Foe Queen simply ripped him apart. A cloud of hot red blood billowed into the water.

"KARKOL, NO!" Ecco screamed. Gruesome pieces floated down towards the floor. The Queen, half-blind and bleeding, turned ponderously in his direction as the disturbed currents in the room carried what was left of his friend away.

Rage filled him as if he were a beacon of fire. He could have rushed her then, attempted to avenge his friend. Ecco found his fury went even deeper than that. Quite deliberately, he turned his back on the advancing Queen and looked at the panel again. There was one more key, only one, that he had not pressed. It carried the symbol of a musical note, a song... the song of Tidesinger... All sorts of confused ideas flashed up in his mind for a moment, but all died swiftly to make way for one thing only. The symbol of the musical note seemed huge in his eyes, as if it were the only thing in the universe.

All things, Ecco thought, for a dolphin, come down to one thing only. The song. The song is what is.

He pressed the final key. The last piece of the puzzle burst into life, and the bubble lit up with a shimmering diagram of the Foe ship, its passages and conduits illuminated in hot light of red, green and blue. Its alien symmetry, laid out before his eyes in entirety, seemed almost beautiful.

He felt a sharp impact upon his side, low down near his tail where the Foe had first wounded him, and then the sickening pain as deep and heavy as the Crushing Dark. Blood clouded his vision on that side. The Queen's blades, it had to be... and by the dark crimson color of that liquid in the water, she had severed an artery.

Ecco's grin was a rictus of pain, but there was a fire of triumph in his brown eyes. The hot burning in his forehead told him Delphinius's constellation was ablaze. He felt all the ancient magic stir in his failing blood, turning him into a vessel for Tidesinger's power. The Power of Song.

He gazed at the diagram, and then used all the Power in his body, pouring his heart and soul into one single word of song.

"BREAK!"

The bubble exploded in a blast of golden flame. An instant after, the panel exploded, and then the fire burst out through everything else in the room. The cables and conduits exploded one after the other as it traveled along them. The room became filled with the sound of explosions. Then, a great roaring wash of water hit Ecco and the cracked glass window burst outwards in shimmering, starlike splinters. Hungry as a shark, the darkness outside pulled out everything that had been in the room--the water exploded out, freezing into chunks of ice. The Foe exploded too, one after the other as the drastic decrease in pressure hit them.

Ecco was blown out through the window, and suddenly found himself spinning in empty space. Stars surrounded him. He felt the pressure dropping, felt the agony as his tissues began to expand, and then saw the Queen.

She floated, turning slowly, out of the window of the crippled ship, tentacles lashing in futile rage. Her body bled, the dark stuff freezing into trails of crystal even as they exited the wounds within her alien flesh. The body of the Foe matriarch was coated with ice. The monster turned her half-blind head towards him, opened her jaws and shrilled without sound. Then, the swollen egg sac of her belly burst asunder and was followed, a moment later, by the rest of her. The Foe Queen, the dreadful mother, was no more... merely rags and tags of frozen flesh gyrating in the frozen expanse of the Sea of Stars.

As the agony in his side began to fade, Ecco felt a warmth around him and saw a cool blue glow that was emanating from his own skin. Asterite, he thought dreamily. Your power... it's still with me. It didn't matter any more. Sparkling crystals of red ice drifted past his eyes--frozen blood from the wound in his flank. He was flying away through space, helpless, trailing a cloud of crimson vapor. Before him the Foe ship shook and shuddered, great parts of it now alight from within with that golden flame. As he watched, one of the bulkheads blew out in another cloud of silent fire. Pieces detached and drifted slowly towards the blue-green Earth below. It was so beautiful...

The Earth rolled slowly away from him, and he became conscious of another, far greater radiance. Ecco's remaining senses were beginning to fade now, but he could still see. His eyes filled with hot whiteness. He was floating towards a globe of white fire that hung in the darkness like the lantern of an unimaginably huge angler-fish. For a moment, he even thought that he saw the bristling needle-jaws and gigantic round eyes, above and below it.

So this is the truth, he thought sleepily to himself. He was almost comfortable now. The Sea of Stars... it is nothing more than a sea. And I'm a mote, a tiny little scrap of life floating through it.

Darkness crept over his vision. His eyes began to close of their own accord. There was a trail of crimson ice behind him now, though the Asterite's power was still strong around his body, protecting him from the freezing vacuum.

Momentarily Ecco was conscious of a flash of movement on either side, and dreamily thought he saw long white bodies speeding towards him through the Sea of Stars, or heard the soft, eerily beautiful voices of dolphins.

Then, all was gone. 


	22. Chapter 22

Epilogue

Suddenly without the unspoken command of their mistress, the Foe upon the Earth slipped into disorganization. They scattered and fled, this way and that, lacking any driving force and any understanding of the place in which they were.

A pride of lions, singed and fierce, fell upon the madly scattering Foe and ripped them with teeth and claws to leave the ground soaked in dark blood.

Two wolves fell upon a huge Foe soldier, dragged it to the ground and tore its throat out, then waited and watched as the dying creature kicked out its life in the churned-up snow. Their cousins ran down the other four Foe and slew them one by one, tracking them for almost an hour through the pine trees.

The stallion reared as the Foe cowered before him. With one swift thunderbolt of a blow, the wild equine stove in the creature's head with his hoof. Then the whole herd was moving, racing across the grassland like an earthquake. The relentless pounding of feet trampled the Foe to death.

Within the water of the Moonsong Lagoon, Greshruk the Slayer slowly became of two things--that it was dawn, and that there were not that many Foe left any more. She cruised like a pale lightning-bolt through the bloodied water, searching for another target. All around her, the sharks were slipping away as the sun began to swell on the horizon. The Slayer felt something approach through the water, and turned with jaws agape, but it was no Foe that met her flat black eyes but the big, unwieldy log-shape of a sperm whale.

"They're gone," he said. "They're all dead or dying."

"So it seems," the Slayer agreed in a soft, hissing voice. "I suppose my work here is done, then. You can leave it with us sharks now; we will pick off the survivors at our leisure."

"Hr'm. I suppose you will." Castor rose and blew, and the Slayer rose with him to swim silently at his side. Castor directed one eye to the pale shape that cruised beside him, scarcely much smaller than himself. "I suppose you've seen the sky, Slayer?"

Greshruk gave him a long look and then pointed her snout up, the water sliding away around her. The Slayer blinked in the air, water cascading from her white body. She looked for a long moment, then slipped slowly back into her element again. She swam on beside the whale, saying nothing.

"Do you suppose--?" Castor began.

"I never suppose." Greshruk did not slow, swimming steadily north out of the lagoon and into the open sea. "Tell me, whale, have you ever heard the truism: 'What is, is what must be'?"

"I think I have, once or twice," Castor said with humor in his eyes.

"Then you understand where I am going, and why."

"Indeed." The whale directed another amused look towards his unwilling companion. "If you have no objections, Slayer, I'll swim with you."

"I have none," Greshruk answered, though it was more of an unwilling grunt than anything else. She continued swimming, and Castor stayed by her, merely rising to breathe every now and again. Both of them were carrying many wounds, but the water had washed them free of blood, and neither of the two giants were seriously injured.

"They made the ultimate sacrifice, you know," the sperm whale observed after another long pause.

Greshruk's flat black eye rolled in his direction for a moment, then returned to face forward again. "I know."

"Do you not care?" Castor asked mildly.

The Slayer was silent for a very long time, and it seemed that she would not answer. But, finally, she did do so, and there was a strange hint of pride in her low, hissing voice. "That was my son, mammal. Yes, we sharks care little for the family ties which you and your kind hold so dear. But still, there is a bond between myself and my own. I invested part of myself in my whelp. I wonder, perhaps, if he could have done anything other than what he did." The corners of Greshruk's mouth pulled back in a deadly smile. "We are of an ancient line, and those who do not know us might say that we are nothing more than mindless killers.

"But I tell you truth, my mammalian friend... when there is darkness in the sky, even a shark can learn to burn bright."

There were no more words between them. Together, side by side, air-breather and water-breather swam on into the dawn. The sun blossomed in the east with a burst of golden flame. And above them in the northern sky, thousands upon thousands of shooting stars glimmered brightly as they made their way down towards the earth.

"Ecco... are you awake, Ecco?"

He opened his eyes. All around him the water shone with a bright glow, as if it were filled with light. Ecco blinked slowly.

A shape faded out of the blue before him--a dolphin, white and dusky black. For a moment he thought that it was Mallidith, and drew back with words of Song coming to his mind, but the other did not have the pale eyes of the traitor. The lone-swimmer cruised towards him slowly, gleaming in the iridescent water, and then turned to swim beside him.

"Who are you?" Ecco asked.

There was a smiling look in the other's eye. "You know who I am."

"I guess I do," he said after a long moment. "What do you want with me?" That came out a little cross, but he couldn't help it. "I thought it would all end with the defeat of the Queen." Ecco dropped his head, remembering. "Karkol died for you," he said. "What else do I have to give up?"

"Nothing," the other dolphin answered almost lightly. "I require nothing. I ask nothing. When the time comes to act, Ecco, you have all the choices... and always have had."

"Some choices."

"I know you are sad and angry, my friend. But some things have to be. If it is any consolation, the actions of yourself and Karkol saved the lives of countless billions." The other dolphin looked at him for a long moment. "You saw what you saved."

"Yeah, I know..." Ecco would have sighed. "But still, I wish I could see it again... and my friends. I don't want to leave them."

"You won't," the other said simply. He started, and stared into the soft dark eyes of the lone-swimmer. "It is not your time, Ecco... not yet. Not for a long while. You were star-born, remember? You heard our song."

The shining water was slipping away from him. The lone-swimmer was fading into the darkness. For a moment Ecco thought he was back in the Sea of Stars, but there was no sun, no stars save the ones upon the lone-swimmer's back. "Wait!" he called. A sudden thought struck him. "Are you Tidesinger, or are you Delphinius? Who are you really?"

The answer came back from a long distance, like an echo. "Farewell, Ecco..."

He opened his eyes, and experienced the strangest disorientation he had ever felt in his life. He was lying on the ground, on his stomach. Somewhere far above, he could hear the gentle sound of waves breaking. Cool blue light streamed in through a crystalline window--daylight. Ecco pushed off the soft bed of seaweed, made two tailstrokes around the room, and looked into the eyes of Afarellan.

"Welcome back, Ecco," the old one said with a kindly smile.

"Wha..?" He stared around him, seeing the delicate murals of the hall in Lunar Bay. The other lone-swimmers were gathered there in formation--he recognized Naylle, looking at him with a beautiful expression in her eyes. There was a single gap in the semi-circle, where Mallidith would have been. "I'm in Lunar Bay?"

"That's right," Afarellan said simply. "We found you here, dead to the world. You've been two days awaking. How do you feel?"

Ecco blinked, realizing that that was a good question. With a little effort he bent his body around, wincing at a twinge in his back, and took a look at his tail where the Foe Queen had left her mark. There was no sign of the wound save for a deep silvery scar. "Did you heal this?" he asked, turning his gaze toward Afarellan.

The old lone-swimmer just shook his head. "Do not ask me to explain the will of Delphinius," he said. "It seems that it was his will for you to be saved."

Ecco dropped his head miserably, those words hitting an unhealed part of his heart. "So he saved me, for what? Poor Karkol gave his life to stop the Queen, and all I did was hit a couple of keys. How come I'm the one who gets to live? It should have been him..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "I should have been the one who died, not him."

"What are you talking about?" A familiar shape appeared in the doorway--a round, barrel-shaped body, slate-gray on top and chalky white below. "I'm here, Ecco, you dummy!" Karkol grinned at his surprise and came forward, the dolphins parting to let him through.

"Karkol!" Ecco squealed, and was for a moment wholly without speech. He dashed to meet his friend--Karkol accelerated likewise, and they met in the middle of the lone-swimmer assembly in a clash of fins and flailing tails. Barely able to believe it, Ecco couldn't leave off touching his friend for a moment, jabbing his snout into the shark's side to prove to himself that Karkol was real. The shark was certainly corporeal, as big and gray as ever, though his hide was criss-crossed here and there with the faint pale marks of what seemed like old scars. The tip of one pectoral fin was blunted.

"Ease off, Ecco," the shark said comfortably. "I'm all right, really. Dunno why or how, though... I just woke up here an hour ago, all present and correct."

"I thought you'd died," Ecco murmured, remembering that terrible moment when the Foe Queen had torn Karkol apart in front of him. "Karkol, I really thought you'd died."

"So did I," the shark said, a slight tone of puzzlement creeping into his voice. "But eh, all's well that ends well!" He grinned again, causing some of the lone-swimmers to draw back nervously.

"You big muscle-head," Ecco said affectionately. "I was scared I'd lost you for good." Karkol looked at him with sparks in his warm black eyes.

Their reunion was interrupted by Afarellan making a delicate noise, the delphine equivalent of clearing the throat in preparation. Ecco and Karkol both turned to face the leader of the lone-swimmers. He regarded them calmly with his gentle dark gaze. "There will be plenty of time later for you two to catch up. Right now, we have something else to do."

"What?" Ecco asked, feeling a sinking in his heart. "Isn't it over yet?"

"Not quite," Afarellan said with a smile. "Follow me, if you would."

Surprised, he glanced at Karkol, and then began to swim as the old one headed out of the hallway and along the corridor. Light streamed in through the windows; schools of fish flashed past outside. The lone-swimmers followed at a distance. Ecco sideyed Karkol, wondering why some of the white dolphins were grinning in that way. Only Naylle had a totally solemn face on. The shark just shook his head slightly, as puzzled as he himself.

They ascended through one of the spires, finally reaching a round stone door that would lead out into the lagoon itself. Afarellan halted here, and now the old one was grinning himself. "Well," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" Ecco asked.

Afarellan merely nodded to Naylle, who had been waiting on the other side of the door. The white female bowed her head in respect and then pushed down a switch set into the wall there. With a slow grating noise of stone on stone, the door slid back.

A huge, jubilant roar went up. Ecco and Karkol started, their eyes widening in shock. Naylle was smiling now, her eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter.

When they had last seen it, Lunar Bay had contained only dolphins, the white-bodied lone-swimmers. Now, though, it was filled with life--all kinds of life, even more than there had been at the Moonsong Stone. Slowly, as if in a dream, Ecco swam out into the waves with Karkol at his side. Sound washed over him like water--cheering. Cheering their names!

The crowds had formed a wide path, through which Ecco and Karkol slowly swam. Great clouds of fish flashed around them as they passed between the spires of Lunar Bay and into the crowd. Dolphins waited fin-to-fin with sharks, all enmity forgotten in the mutual joy of the momentous occasion. Ecco stared around in wonder, seeing almost every kind of sea-creature he could have imagined. Tiny seahorses danced in and out of the weeds. The black-and-white killers were leaping completely clear of the water in their joy--he laughed out loud, recognizing the familiar faces of Khorik and his mate and calves. Corse and the others of the Sapphire Bay pod were in the crowd, and Orcus--and beside him, a female common dolphin who, by the way she stayed close to him and pressed her head against his, was indeed his lost life-mate. White seagulls dived into the water all around them, streaming silver bubbles from their glittering plumage. Half-stunned by exhilaration, Ecco swam on--glancing at Karkol, he saw that the shark was just as overcome by the sight as he himself.

One by one, as they passed by, each dolphin, shark or fish bowed its head and splayed its fins, in a universally recognized display of respect. Then, out of the blue waters before them, appeared an immense bulk. Sunlight gleamed off deep blue skin, and for one moment the wild cheering of the crowds was drowned out by the subsonic rumble of the blue whale.

Gracefully, Sendarian the Songmaster bowed his head.

It was late evening by the time they could get away. Ecco and Karkol swam quietly side-by-side through waters that were once again still and peaceful; they had passed through the illusory stone and were now heading west towards the setting sun and, for Ecco, Sapphire Bay.

"Pretty amazing, huh?" the shark said finally.

Ecco favored him with a look, grinning. "You kidding? My ears are still ringing!"

Karkol nodded with laughter in his eyes, then suddenly he paused and looked more serious. "So, Ecco," he said, "what are you gonna do now?"

"Now?" Ecco blinked. "I don't know, to be honest. I guess I'll go back to Sapphire Bay for a while."

"A while?" the shark asked mildly.

He dipped his fins in a delphine shrug. "Yeah. I don't know what else I'll do. After... everything that happened... I don't really feel like your average dolphin any more. I might become a lone-swimmer, you never know."

Karkol sideyed him. "Kinda dangerous..."

Ecco laughed. "Yeah, and I'm gonna be really scared of tiger sharks after the Foe Queen!"

"Good point." The shark grinned. "Well, look... if you ever need me for anything, or just wanna hang for a while...I'll be around, okay?"

"Thanks, Karkol," Ecco said, smiling. "I may take you up on that."

"I guess this is goodbye then," Karkol said awkwardly. He turned and swam away a few lengths, then paused and looked back. "Ecco..."

"Go on, get," Ecco answered gently. "I know you can't exactly stay around when I rejoin the pod. Don't worry, Karkol, we're gonna meet again." He glanced up at the evening sky, where the first faint stars were glimmering. "I know it," he finished off firmly. "Delphinius has more in store for us."

Karkol nodded, looking happier. "Whatever it is, we'll handle it," the shark said, then grinned again. "I'll see you around then, good buddy."

"Have fun!" Ecco called after him. The shark glanced back, grinned at him, and then swam off into the gathering dusk. In moments his big gray body had faded from sight.

It took several days to travel that long distance back home, crossing the entire ocean and then heading down the coast, following its twisting curves towards home.

But now at last, Sapphire Bay was on the horizon, and Ecco could hear the soft singing of dolphins in the distance. He sped up. It had been a long adventure, and in many ways kind of fun, but Ecco was going to be pretty glad to get back home again and return to some sort of normalcy.

"Wait, Ecco..."

He stopped dead in the water, a sudden shiver of fear running through him. He knew that voice! Swiftly Ecco cast about him, searching for some way to hide, but there was nothing--he was still in open waters, had not yet reached the continental shelf. He froze as the pale form of the Slayer appeared before him, materializing out of the water like a ghost. She paused several lengths away, her mouth open just enough to reveal the gleaming teeth.

"We have some unfinished business, Ecco," Greshruk said softly, her voice hissing through her jaws. "Do you remember?"

With a lurch, he recalled that first meeting, where she had sworn to kill him. Ecco glanced around swiftly, hoping to see something which he might be able to use to distract her, and wondered whether the Power of Song would work on a shark.

Greshruk swam forward slowly, taking her time. "I will soon return to my home waters, little mammal, but before I leave I would have words with you."

"Yeah?" Ecco asked, a little shakily. "What?"

She gazed at him through cool black eyes. "My people are not barbarians, Ecco--we realize what you did for this Earth. But, we are of a certain nature. Just because you did a great deed does not mean that you can be exempt from the Law."

"The Law?"

"Dolphins have many laws, killer whales have three. Sharks, little mammal, have only one." Greshruk's jaws parted slightly. "The fittest survive." She paused, looking at him. "You have saved my life, Ecco, along with that of every other creature on this planet. By leaving now with an empty stomach, I save yours in return. Thus, this once I spare you. But be warned--enter my waters again, and you had better look to your tail."

"I will, Greshruk," Ecco said, awash in a feeling of abject relief. "Thanks."

The Slayer didn't answer. She turned and glided off, serene in the knowledge of her ultimate supremacy under the waters, and was soon lost to sight.

Now, he thought to himself, it is really all over.

He started to swim again, towards the bay and the place where his family waited--towards the place where, once again, he would be reunited with Star. Ecco's eyes twinkled thoughtfully at the image of the female dolphin.

Above him in the velvety black sky, there was no moon but the thinnest silver splinter... a new moon.

A new moon, heralding a new approaching day. 


End file.
